In this season of beach days, where better than Kailua to find one artist's take on the essence of summer?

"Kailua Beach Day," Jodi Endicott's life-size, mixed-media concrete-and-metal sculpture, swam into view last week. Gracing the site of the soon-to-open Kalapawai Cafe & Deli on Kailua Road, the artwork also fits into the greater scheme of Kailua's ongoing face-lift.

"We're funding art in public places as part of the renewal and beautification of Kailua," said Mitch D'Olier, president and CEO of Kaneohe Ranch Co., who commissioned the work.

"We asked Jodi Endicott because she is a really talented artist ... and she lives in Kailua."

With four permanent works already in public places, Endicott talked to us about her newest installation.

Q. Who is your model?

A. In terms of gesture, the sculpture of Edgar Degas' ballet dancer was an initial influence. In a sense it's a contemporary take on this classical sculpture I saw at the Art Institute of Chicago. But really, everyone is a model, as features stay in your mind from people you meet — someone's eyes, a nose, it just comes out and I have to accept who I find there.

Q. Where does the fascination with swim tubes come from?

A. I don't really know; they're just fun and playful ... and old-fashioned. We're on an island where everyone is, in a way, floating, bobbing along. When I was working on the original "Tubers" in '95, every day I would drive from home past the canal in Kailua, past dogs and fishermen and joggers and of course bathers, which became images cut in half by a plane of water. Then I would drive into Honolulu and be surrounded by concrete buildings and somehow the juxtaposition of those two environments resulted in the sculptures. Tubes keep us afloat, they save us from drowning literally and metaphorically, perhaps it's a reference to deeper water within all of us.

Q. Are you currently working more with painting or sculpture?

A. Well, I love getting art into public places, and sculpture is a vehicle for doing that. It's all about the top surface. Sculpture is my day job, if you like, my bread and butter, and it's very physical. I need a forklift, a crew, concrete, space. Painting goes into deeper territory and is much more solitary.

Q. What are you working on now?

A. I'm getting ready for an exhibition at Hawai'i Pacific University, opening July 30 from 4 to 6 p.m., which will include part of my recent "Beasts to Birds" show at Maui Arts and Cultural Center. I'm also focusing on sending work to the Mainland ... But it's also a time to regroup, to consider new projects.

Q. What do you want people to take away from your work?

A. I want people to tap into their own experience. To look and maybe see relatives, recall a memory, to experience something personal to them. Someone came to me once and said ("Tubers") had reminded her of a long ago rafting trip in Colorado.

And I want people to feel close to it. For example, my sculpture of the man on the bench at the corner of King and Bishop streets in Honolulu is a place where people leave newspapers there for others to read, or may leave a lei around his neck. The idea of the sculpture becoming a part of the landscape and used in that way is pleasing to me, to bring people together, to talk to each other, to interact where they might not otherwise do so. That is the true essence of art in public places that interests me.

"Kailua Beach Day" is at a transitional place in Kailua town, where hopefully people will walk by it, make it a meeting place, have their photo taken there, become familiar with it and feel like the sculpture is theirs. (Curious Kailuans had begun unwrapping the newly installed sculpture from its packaging hours before Endicott revealed it last week).

"Kailua Beach Day" is something everyone can identify with; its topic is universal.

Reach Chris Oliver at coliver@honoluluadvertiser.com.