The Ames City Council and Ames Arts Commission gave the green light Tuesday night for the artist of the redesigned Ames Circle of Arts sculpture in Bandshell Park.

City staff and the arts commission will now negotiate a contract with the artist, William Culbertson, for his sculpture of a woman holding a globe.

Culbertson said he will begin to work on the sculpture as soon as he returns to his home in Rhode Island. He said it will take about one year to complete.

This is the second design of the sculpture after it had been approved by the city council last spring, said Pattie Kimle, chairwoman of the Circle of Arts Committee.

“There was really never any controversy over this project,” she said. “After Bill started to work on the materials of the project, he discovered the original design wasn’t structurally possible.”

The sculpture is of a woman holding up a globe with a ribbon draped over her body. In the original design, the woman was nude.

Culbertson said the arm holding up the globe wasn’t structurally sound.

“I started calling foundries all over the country,” he said. “They told me that the arm was a weak spot in the sculpture.”

Instead of just draping the ribbon across the woman’s arm, he said, the ribbon now wraps under the arm and acts as a brace. He said it would also act as a place for the founders to connect the two bronze pieces.

After Culbertson finishes the project, it will be bronzed. That process will be cheaper if the statue is cast in two pieces instead of one.

Kimle said the redesign wasn’t in response to the woman appearing nude in the original design of the statue.

“The redesign was strictly structural,” she said. “The ribbon [draped behind the woman] couldn’t be cast in bronze as the artist had originally wanted it to be.”

The Ames Circle of Arts project was financed by private donations, Kimle said. This project is part of a bigger Bandshell Park revitalization. The project had a budget of $75,000, she said, and the artist has made accommodations to meet that price.