“Nichols Brothers employee Ken Gillette stands on the truck and controls the hoist as part of the huge sculpture is moved at Whidbey General Hospital.South Whidbey boat builders went north last week to rescue a work of art that could have been facing destruction.For more than three decades Whidbey General Hospital has hosted a huge, three-piece sculpture created in 1970. It sat in an out-of-the-way location, but then the hospital decided it needed the space for its new cancer care addition.Trish Rose, director of communications for the hospital, said the sculpture weighed thousands of pounds. A group called Save Our Sculptures was contacted, they surveyed the artwork and estimated the cost of moving it at $8,000. With the hospital already scaling back voter-approved expansion plans, there was no money in the budget to move the sculpture.Without a donation, it was going to have to be destroyed , she said.Rose dialed for help and got lucky on the first call, which she made to Matt Nichols of Nichols Brothers Boat Builders in Freeland. He donated the labor and heavy equipment needed for the move. I told them we’d do it, Nichols said. We want to help them any way we can.Nichols employees Ken Gillette and Scott Statia arrived at the hospital last Tuesday with a large Nichols Brothers truck with a hydraulic lift. Gillette said the heaviest piece of the three-piece sculpture weighed 7,000 pounds but the truck was capable of handling 10,000 pounds.A city of Coupeville backhoe prepared the new site for the sculpture in front of the hospital where it can be seen from the main road. A lot more people are going to know it’s here because now you can actually see it, Rose said.The sculpture was created for the hospital’s opening in 1970 by Michael Park, a sculptor and home builders who at the time had lived in the South Whidbey area for five years. He was assisted by Charles Talman, a sculptor who was stationed at NAS Whidbey.Information about Parks was sketchy this week. Rose said he died in the summer of 2000.The sculpture is listed in the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System, which describes it as three sand quadrilateral slabs of concrete covered in relief patterns. The three slabs are set directly on the ground to form a triangular shape open ‘room,’ through which people can walk. A bench is placed on the outside of the lowest slab.The sculpture’s dimensions are approximately 14 by 22 by 16 feet. Its creation was a donation by the artists, who were helped by $500 in local donations for materials.In a 1970 newspaper interview, Park noted a Stonehenge quality of the work, due to its design and size. After 31 years, Whidbey General’s Stonehenge is stronger than ever and ready for many more years in its new, more visible location. “