PAWTUCKET — Three finalists have been selected in the competition to design an artistic work that city officials hope will put the city on the map.

Donald Gerola, Kenneth Speiser and two artists working as team — Nicholas Hollibaugh and Joshua Enck — have been selected from among 11 contestants who submitted their qualifications to a panel of experts assembled by the Pawtucket Planning Department during the fall.

Over the next six months, the artists will come up with competing designs for a sculpture to go up outside the Blackstone Valley Visitors Center, at 175 Main St.

City officials are looking for a work of art that will mark Pawtucket as the home of Slater Mill, birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, as a gateway to the Blackstone River Valley, and as the home of an arts and entertainment district.

Gerola, Speiser and the Hollibaugh-Enck team were picked on the basis of their backgrounds and experience, as well as photographs showing their completed works.

None of the contestants is a stranger to Pawtucket.

In 2001, Speiser’s Jacks, a big environmental sculpture inspired by the children’s game of jacks, was installed in Slater Memorial Park.

Last August, Gerola’s Wind Rotor, a 23-foot-high steel structure with a movable rotor, went up on loan on the east bank of the Blackstone River, opposite Slater Mill.

Hollibaugh and Enck haven’t created an artwork for the city, but Hollibaugh, a furniture maker and sculptor, works here, having set up shop on Esten Avenue after Box Elder Studios, the six-person wood and metal shop he co-founded in Providence, was shut down to make way for condos.

Enck, 30, is based in Fall River. An architect as well as a furniture maker, he met Hollbaugh while they were pursuing master’s degrees at the Rhode Island School of Design.

The contestants were picked by a panel of experts that included architecture professors James Barnes, of RISD, and Roseann Evans, of Roger William University; architects Martha Werenfels, of Durkee, Brown, Viveiros and Werenfels; Luke Mandle, of Two Ton Inc., and sculptor Howard Ben Tre.

Gerola, Speiser and the Enck-Hollbaugh team are being paid $1,500 each to come up with designs for the artwork. The winning design will be selected by the panel of experts.

The goal is to have a winner by June, and a final set of designs by September. The winning artist or team will receive an additional $4,500 for the artwork, which will be erected by the city on a budget capped at $50,000.

Although it wasn’t required at this point in the selection process, Gerola’s submission included a written description of the piece he envisions. His intention, he said, is to create a “unique 30-foot sculpture” that would marry “organic forms” and “a graceful industrial armature cut from one- to 3-inch welded steel plates.”

“A kinetic wind element will power a mechanism symbolizing the circular motion of the water wheel,” he added, “and early American weight-driven clocks.”

Speiser said in an interview he is already toying with ideas, but it’s too early in the creative process to talk about them.

Hollibaugh and Enck haven’t begun the design process yet, but are planning to get to work in about three weeks, when Enck returns from India.

It will be their first substantial collaboration, Hollibaugh said.

The design competition is being financed with a $10,000 grant from the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission. The idea for a signature sculpture outside the Visitors Center came from a “vision statement” drawn up for the commission by the design firm Gates Leighton and Associates.

jcastell@projo.com