A $2 million project to create a memorial to victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing is now complete.
Two massive sculptures designed by Gloucester artist Pablo Eduardo now stand at sites near the marathon finish line on Boylston Street in Back Bay.
The granite sculptures are made from stone taken from places that had meaning to each of the three victims killed in the explosion: 8-year-old Martin Richard, 23-year-old Lingzi Lu, and 29-year-old Krystle Campbell.
“Lingzi was a BU student, and the stone came from one of the bridges that they were redoing,” said Eduardo, who worked closely with the victims’ families throughout the design process. “For Marty, we got the stone from Franklin Park. And for Krystle, we got it from Spectacle Island, which is where she loved to spend her summers.”
Eduardo said he wants viewers of the memorial to remember what forever changed this part of Boylston Street six years ago.
“I hope that we give people just a little bit of quietness so that they can come into the space and just reflect a little,” he said.
An array of spires made of glass and bronze surround each of the memorials, constructed at the two locations where the victims died. Eduardo said the spires, which light up at night, are meant to symbolize the fragility of life.
The memorial across from the Boston Public Library, which marks where Campbell died, carries the inscription: “All we have lost is brightly lost.”
The other memorial, constructed where Richard and Lu died, is inscribed with: “Let us climb, now, the road to hope.”
The names of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier of Somerville and Boston Police Officer Dennis Simmonds, who were killed after the bombing, are etched into two bricks made of bronze at the memorial.
