The honorarium doesn’t even pay for the gas it takes sculptor Jeff Turner to drive to Grand Junction from his home in Silver City, N.M. But he had such a good time last year he couldn’t resist offering another piece to Grand Junction’s Art on the Corner series.

Turner’s red, twisting metal structure on the 300 block of Main Street was traded in for a cooper-infused steel sculpture called “Leap Frog” Saturday morning during the 20th annual Art and Jazz Festival.

Volunteers from FCI Constructors installed 30 new works of art along downtown Main Street and took out the old beginning around 7 a.m. Travis Torgersen of FCI said he didn’t mind getting up early to help.

“My dogs get me up at the crack of dawn no matter what,” he said.

The sculptures range from smooth marble structures to bronze children, colorful shapes to what looks like a spinning piece of origami. The variety of pieces are chosen by the Art on the Corner committee based on artistic quality and appropriateness for being displayed downtown, said committee member Brian Harrison.

“Sometimes the (rejected) pieces are too fragile to be outside and some are dangerous, with sharp points,” Harrison said.

Artist Ed Pogue, a professor from Lindsborg, Kan., heard about Art on the Corner when he interviewed for a sculpture teaching position at Mesa State College. He has a galley — A Gallery — in Salt Lake City, and decided to display his work in a place that’s on the drive to Utah. His piece is a steel column with cast bronze rocks and a stick. The sculpture uses contrasting metals to show the contrast of warmth and cold, or even the local energy industry and the Colorado National Monument, Pogue said.

“It’s about geometry versus nature and how they interact with each other,” he said.

Inspiration for Santa Fe artist Dimitry Domani’s sculpture of a young boy with a protruding belly button came from a friend’s son. The friend, who is from and has since returned to Zaire, was living in Santa Fe and played soccer with Domani. When Domani went to the friend’s house, the man’s son was running around the house naked.

“I thought — that’s a perfect sculpture,” he said.

Reach Emily Anderson at eanderson@gjfreepress.com.