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TANNERSVILLE — The artist whose massive sculpture is installed on the grounds of an elementary school here once had to fight for art to be valued in his own village, the artist's granddaughter said on Friday.

The work he created, an eight-ton minimalist sculpture named "Tension," has been part of a similar struggle in the Poconos.

"Tension" was created by Yehiel Shemi, an Israeli sculptor born in Europe in 1923. He grew up in Haifa, but he became restless in his late teens.

"He decided he wanted to move and change his life dramatically," Ofri Cnaani, Shemi's granddaughter, told fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at Pocono Elementary Center.

Shemi joined in the founding of Kibbutz Capri north of the Dead Sea.

Kibbutzes, or collective communities, sprouted in Palestine after World War I, inspired by a Zionist, socialist vision of communal living. "All the Kibbutz members share all their lives," Cnaani said, including income, expenses and all the jobs that need to be done.

"There's one huge kitchen, kind of like this room," she said of the elementary center's cafeteria, where she spoke.

Even the children all live together, she explained, and not with their families. Cnaani, who is a working visual artist in New York City, grew up in Cabri. "It was like a year-long summer camp," she said.

While Shemi's contemporaries at Cabri's founding were starting factory and farming business to sustain the community's economy, Shemi had a different idea. He wanted to create art. His fellow Kibbutz members fought him fiercely.

But Shemi argued that art was as important to the health of the Kibbutz as bringing in income. "It's not food," Cnaani said, quoting her grandfather. "It's food for thought."

Shemi won out. He started creating traditional sculptures of human figures, which Cnaani showed to the students. Later, he became more interested in minimalism, or reducing art to its most essential parts. His work was seen as radical at the time.

"He was always interested in creating tension between elements," said Cnaani. "He wanted to preserve (the viewer's) relationship with natural forces."

His sculptures have been installed in the Smithsonian Institution's Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In 1986, he won the Israel Prize, considered the highest honor in the country.

Though Shemi died in 2003, his studio still sits in the center of Cabri, across from its high school. "I think a community cannot live without a spiritual, cultural life," Cnaani said.

"Tension" also needed its value to be fought for. It was commissioned by Philip Berman, chief executive officer of Hess's department store, and sited outside the store on Route 611 in 1978.

"Some people love it and some people are more suspicious about it," Cnaani said.

Over time, Hess' became Bon-Ton, Berman died, and the sculpture started to wither away. Stroud Mall, which owned it, tried to give it away.

Ten years ago, Sue Crowley, head of Pocono Mountain School District's art department and a former Hess's employee, led a futile effort to salvage the sculpture. The school board rejected it.

Stroud Mall was on the verge of junking the piece this summer. The district's teachers tried again. This time, the school board approved a new effort to save "Tension."

Papillon & Moyer Excavating & Paving volunteered to take down, move and reassemble the work to the campus of Pocono Elementary Center. Twenty-five donors pledged $11,000 to restore and landscape the grounds, according to Catherine Sweeney, Pocono Elementary's principal. No money came from the district.

After Cnaani spoke, several students asked her for her autograph. Sweeney pointed to the students' art lining the walls and asked what advice she had for aspiring artists.

"Sometimes we try to be like all the other kids. We want to stay in the middle," Cnaani said. "But to be an artist, you must not be afraid to be an individual."