Tahoe artist takes a swing at creating golf icons

By Kathryn Reed

Super-sized golf balls are cropping up around the South Shore.

The first two went in Tuesday at Edgewood Tahoe and Zephyr Cove Resort, with a third to be installed late Thursday afternoon at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe. Two more will appear this weekend – one at Lake Tahoe Golf Course and the other at Heavenly Village.

South Tahoe artist Carole Beller is using her skill at creating artwork that looks like granite to dress up town for this week’s American Century Celebrity Golf Tournament. She’s so good the balls even feel like granite.

Carole Beller's golf art is popping up around the South Shore. Photo/Kathryn Reed

“You can’t use real granite because it would be too heavy,” Beller told Lake Tahoe News as she was still working on the third ball.

Still, they weigh about 400 pounds. They are made out of cement, steel and foam.

The whole contraption is 9-feet-tall, with the ball being 5-feet in diameter. Instead of sitting on a tee, the balls are atop what looks like a tree trunk.

Being the only house on the street allows Beller the space to spread her project out. A group of friends has been helping her get everything together so the artwork coincides with this week’s tournament in Stateline.

The Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority commissioned the works of art.

“We think that the ‘promotional’ art achieves several objectives: celebrate and increase awareness of a specific event through an artistic interpretation, (and) promote one of our passions,” LTVA Executive Director Carol Chaplin told Lake Tahoe News. “

This artwork is a work in progress, is how Chaplin described it. The first pieces were the oversized bicycles that cropped up as the Tour de California was about to start on the South Shore. More is likely at different times of the year for various events.