The Bulbusim Sculpture

The story

At the entrance to the city stand fourteen limestone rocks one on top of another. The sculpture was erected in 1964, in the founding years of Arad, and it was designed in the inspiration of the rujum — the Bedouin waymark built of piled stones. In its erection there took part the planner of the city, the architect Yona Pitelson, and the subcontractor Gideon Friedman, who was later the house artist of the Glass Museum in the city. The two were neighbors in the Rishonim neighborhood, the group of huts in which the founding team and their families lived. Friedman built a small rujum in the yard of his house, Pitelson saw it and proposed to erect a large sculpture at the entrance to the city that had not yet arisen. The rocks were gathered from the surroundings, and it was their shape that gave them the name bulbusim. To stabilize the sculpture a cable was threaded through a hole hewn in the rocks, and an iron plate closes over it at the top. In the plan there were eighteen rocks, and on the recommendation of the engineer of the founding team fourteen were erected. The first storm that passed here after the placement did not move it. With the paving of the nearby road and the differences in level, a retaining wall was built on the east and wide steps leading to the sculpture, faced with the local stone that characterizes the early building in the city. In 2008 the site was renewed and lighting was added to it. The sculpture appeared in the first bulletins of the Arad Region Administration, on postcards, and in the emblem that the municipality issued for fifty years to the city.

• Public art
• Bedouin
• Arad