Chris Miller creates public art projects with hopes that they spark joy, curiosity and a sense of wonder about the world.

In that vein, Miller, of South Portland, sculpted Wild Maybes, four large, concrete animals that now grace Levine’s Park in downtown Waterville, inspired by a nostalgia for pre-history.

“They’re also inspired by real prehistoric animals that lived right after the dinosaurs — the first mammals to grow to any substantial size,” Miller said Thursday.

Waterville Creates commissioned the installation, to be presented Friday night from 5-7 p.m. at an official opening during the First Friday event in collaboration with the city.

First Friday is a monthly celebration of the arts and business in downtown Waterville. As part of the event, Main Street will be closed from Temple to Spring streets for a block party. Waterville Creates is partnering with Colby College Museum of Art, Elm City Music School, Discover Waterville and others to offer what they describe as fun and free programs for people of all ages.

Marie Sugden, exhibitions coordinator for Waterville Creates, said Thursday the event will include art, music, food and merriment, and a special reception hosted by Front & Main on the restaurant’s terrace overlooking Levine’s Park and Miller’s sculptures.

“This project reflects our community’s strong desire for more public art and we’re thrilled to welcome Wild Maybes as a joyful and imaginative presence in downtown Waterville,” Sugden said in an email.

Block party activities will include weaving and art-making at the Paul J. Schupf Art Center at 93 Main St., lawn games, sidewalk chalk art and an invitation to explore Green Block + Studios and listen to music presented by Elm City Music School.

Miller, 42, said he hopes Wild Maybes will stir people to imagine what the world was like when prehistoric animals roamed the earth, 40 million to 60 million years ago. Visitors may interact with the hollow, concrete animal sculptures if they wish and are welcome to hug them, but he asks that they not climb on them.

The largest sculpture is about about 8 feet tall and weights 7,000 pounds, the second-largest about 5,000 pounds, and the two smaller ones, 1,700 to 2,500 pounds. Miller said he created them in the yard of his South Portland studio. They were trucked to Waterville and moved by crane onto heavy bases.

Miller grew up in rural Fifty Lakes, Minnesota, and was fascinated with prehistoric and living animals, he said.

“I grew up way out in the woods and so there were times you’d come home at night and find a bear asleep on the hot top near your house,” he said. “And deer — deer everywhere, of course.”

He also was interested in art, and building things. His father was a building contractor.

After high school, Miller earned a master’s degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s in fine art in sculpture and drawing from the Art Institute of Chicago.

During school breaks and summers, he worked in art galleries, making pedestals and hanging artworks and lights. He built sets for theaters. He helped build houses, supervised a wood and metal shop, and did carpentry and other work, all of which helped hone the skills he uses in his art work.

But the most interesting job he held was working for an engineering consultancy business that specialized in domes, arches and vaults made with brick and stone, he said. One of his MIT professors in Cambridge, Massachusetts, owned the business with partners from Zurich, Switzerland, and Cambridge, England, Miller said.

“They worked all over the world,” he said.

Miller’s Maine installations include Carousel Cosmos, a temporary exhibit in Portland. His works have been featured at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., Boston Public Library, Shenzhen Biennale, City Museum of New York, Janet Wallace Center at Macalester College, Hyde Park Center and Myopic Books in Chicago.

The Wild Maybe installation in Levine’s Park is located between Front Street to the east and Main Street to the west and overlooks Spring and Water streets to the south. An inscription accompanying the installation says the Wild Maybes are visitors from an ancient earth, “as remote and unknowable as the far future.

“That is why they are stationed here as honorary crossing guards, where the deep past and the far future meet.  You can roam here too if you like, among the wild maybes, in  the vastness and richness of time beyond reckoning.”