19 December 2014

This Gift to Tufts Isn’t a White Elephant Exactly, even bigger than www.bigbronze.com or www.allcassics.com elehants

P.T. Barnum’s ‘Jumbo,’ a Stuffed Animal, Burned Down; Rebuilding in Bronze, Slowly

Sculptor Steven Whyte poses with the new bronze statue of Jumbo as it is being assembled. ENLARGE
Sculptor Steven Whyte poses with the new bronze statue of Jumbo as it is being assembled. Steven Whyte Studios
When Dick Reynolds contemplated a six-figure gift to Tufts University, he knew it wouldn’t be enough for a new building or even a wing. But he was thinking big.
So he commissioned an 11- by 18-foot bronze statue of the school mascot, P.T. Barnum’s storied elephant named Jumbo.
The actual stuffed hide of the great beast—a 19th-century animal superstar—had been displayed on the Medford, Mass., campus for decades. Students would stuff pennies in his trunk for good luck before exams. But, in 1975, the real Jumbo was lost in a fire.
A papier-mâché and concrete replacement from a local amusement park served as a cheeky stand-in beginning in the 1990s. Mr. Reynolds aims for something more grand, and more authentic, with his 5,000-pound gift to his alma mater.
Jumbo statue model
Jumbo statue model
“To know that we’re going to have one that looks like a real elephant, I think that’s important,” says Mr. Reynolds, class of ’67. “This thing was one god-awful, ugly, gray elephant.”
Jaw-dropping donations are common enough at top universities, including a record $350 million gift to Harvard University earlier this year.
But schools also get their share of unusual legacies, reflecting their graduates’ idiosyncratic interests. In 2005, DePauw University in Indiana received a rhinestone-encrusted deer statue, even though the school’s mascot is a tiger.
A wealthy shipbuilder gave Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., and two other New England schools a cruise ship in 2006. But after trying, the schools weren’t able to sell the 137-foot Niagara Prince and gave it back.
And venture capitalist Brad Feld in 2007 gave the University of Colorado in Boulder $25,000, stipulating that a plaque in his honor be placed outside a men’s restroom. (It reads: “The best ideas often come at inconvenient times—Don’t ever close your mind to them.”)
The new Jumbo’s journey to Tufts—125 years after the original arrived—has hit some snags. The school staged an art exhibition, scheduled presentations on circus history and commissioned a book, preparing for Jumbo’s arrival at homecoming this fall.
But the statue’s creation—a complex process that includes hard industrial foam, rubber molds, reinforced ears, tail and trunk and a road trip from California—is coming along at a snail’s pace.
It is now expected to make its campus debut in the spring.
The mounted hide of P.T. Barnum's elephant, Jumbo, at Tufts University near Boston, with members of the school's football team in 1935. ENLARGE
The mounted hide of P.T. Barnum's elephant, Jumbo, at Tufts University near Boston, with members of the school's football team in 1935. Tufts University
Mr. Reynolds’s gift is itself the result of an unusual bestowal by Barnum, the famed showman and founding Tufts trustee, who donated funds for a science building and natural history museum at the school. In 1889, he capped those donations with Jumbo’s stuffed hide.
The original Jumbo went down in flames in a fire that gutted the building; some of his ashes are now held in a peanut-butter jar in the athletic department.
For the past two decades, Tufts students have posed next to and played with what was meant to be a temporary replacement, the cartoonish papier-mâché statue bought by the class of 1958 for $4,500 from the now-defunct Benson’s Wild Animal Farm amusement park in Hudson, N.H.
“He was never meant to live that long,” says Elaine Kasparian, who helped lead that effort, which included an additional $35,000 for transportation and landscaping.
The amusement park Jumbo was actually an Indian elephant, not an African one. The two are quite different. The African elephant is much bigger in body, ears and tusks, and has a different head shape. The elephant’s tail fell off a few times, a casualty of student horseplay and old age. And the beast needed an annual paint job.
That Jumbo has since been retired, though Ms. Kasparian declined to say how. “He went to heaven,” she says.
The benefactor Mr. Reynolds, who worked mostly in commercial real estate and served as vice president of operations at the university for three years, says his landscaping and other efforts to spruce up the campus were always well received. He decided on the donation in 2012.
“Other colleges have generic bobcats and empty symbols as their mascots. We, on the other hand, have what is arguably the most famous animal in the world,” says Andrew McClellan, an art history professor who wrote a book called “Jumbo: Marvel, Myth, and Mascot,” after collecting material for years.
Artist Steven Whyte used archival pictures and zoo visits to create small models of the elephant before beginning work on the full-size statue at his studio in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. He first built a steel skeleton of the elephant, covering it in hard foam and then about 3,000 pounds of clay.
Individual parts, including the trunk, ears, tail and jaw, were covered with a rubber product before being topped with a fiberglass and plaster mold. The first coat of rubber, costing about $15,000, didn’t set properly and needed to be scrapped, putting the project well behind schedule.
Mr. Whyte also says he underestimated the animal’s size by more than 100 square feet, so he’ll lose about $25,000 on the elephant.
“It seems to be in keeping with the tragic life of Jumbo, that things didn’t go smoothly,” Mr. Whyte says.
Jumbo was captured in Africa in 1862, when he was just a year old, according to Mr. McClellan’s book. Among the first African elephants to reach Europe, Jumbo became a featured attraction at the London zoo, until P.T. Barnum bought him for $10,000 and brought him to the U.S. in 1882.
Jumbo, whose name became synonymous with huge, was the biggest draw of the Greatest Show on Earth. His likeness was used on toys, playing cards and popcorn tins and pictured in ads for everything from soap to suspenders.
Just three years into his U.S. circus career, Jumbo was hit and killed in Canada by an unscheduled freight train in Ontario in 1885.
Now, Jumbo’s finished bronze pieces are being assembled at a Berkeley, Calif., foundry.
Mr. Whyte says he and his team are working through a “very difficult, 50-piece jigsaw puzzle, with each piece weighing 100 pounds.”
Though many students are looking forward to taking selfies in front of the new statue, some are stamping their feet, disappointed that Tufts accepted the gift.
“Jumbo is one representation of money not being prioritized in a way that we think it should be,” says Lior Appel-Kraut, a sophomore and president of the Tufts Labor Coalition, which has held demonstrations supporting the rights of adjunct instructors and custodial workers.
School officials are disappointed about the holdup but say the wait will be worth it.
“It’ll get here when it gets here,” says Mr. McClellan. “It is going to be a big deal.”
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Library gets its owl statue sculpture back, 43 years overdue

Library gets its sculpture back, 43 years overdue

78 27 LINKEDINCOMMENTMORE
ROCHESTER — A small marble statue borrowed from the downtown library here finally made it back — 43 years after it was first taken.
Scott Stewart, 52, of Rochester said his childhood was plagued with abuse, but he sought refuge at the Rochester Central Library. In 1971, the 9-year-old spent his days looking at books and often borrowed art pieces for his home.
"The house I lived in was really horrendous and I wanted to surround it with the comfort of the library," Stewart said. "I would always take things back, except this one piece. I felt like I couldn't part with it."
To him, the statue of an owl protecting its babies represented his mother's best efforts to care for him and his brother. Though the sculpture wasn't his property, he said the piece brought him strength and peace in turbulent times.
"I hung on to that thing and cherished it," he said. "I treated it like it was gold."
Stewart became an emancipated minor at 13 years old and said he spent the rest of his youth in and out of foster homes around this upstate New York city. Forty-three years later, Stewart finally felt that the statue had fulfilled its purpose and returned it Sunday.
"I felt like after all these years I was finally able to close the door on that chapter," he said. "It was quite exhilarating."
Although the library's sculpture collection no longer exists, a library clerk welcomed the statue back and pardoned Stewart of his overdue fines.
"When we have a story like this, it makes us pause and makes us appreciate what we do," said Ove Overmyer, communication associate for the Monroe County Library System. "He was looking for a symbol of comfort, and he found it at the library."
Related:

24 October 2014

Marble quarry and how they harvest and make ready for your work of art

Need some marble for your sculpture? Lots of dangerous work to bring a piece to you.
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/watching-the-extraction-of-gigantic-marble-blocks-is-od-1649805695?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

22 October 2014

Underwater staues and scupture, your school mascot custom made for this?



 
I write about art and culture. FULL BIO >
Resting on the ocean floor, towering nearly 17-feet-tall, kneels a young Bahamian girl supporting the ceiling of the water on her shoulders. “Ocean Atlas” is the most recent work by underwater sculpture artist Jason deCaires Taylor, installed earlier this month off the western coastline of New Providence in Nassau, Bahamas. The work alludes to Atlas, the Titan of Greek mythology whose eternal punishment of holding the world on his back has inspired artistic renditions for centuries. Created with a high-density, pH-neutral marine cement engineered to last for hundreds of years, “Ocean Atlas” also serves as an artificial reef to foster local marine life.
Weighing 60 tons, “Ocean Atlas” is the largest single sculpture to reside underwater, according to Taylor. A local student named Camilla served as the model for the colossal girl, who gazes serenely at her surroundings, her head resting sideways on one bent knee, further propped up by her arm. During low tide, her reflection appears on the underside of the sea’s surface, creating an illusion of a mirror for divers. To place her carefully in site, Taylor had to develop a technique that involved lowering and assembling the work in smaller sections.
Ocean Atlas Jason deCaires Taylor Nassau Bahamas 003 copy
All photos courtesy the artist.
“It was [created] using 3D scans and a layered mould,” Taylor wrote through email. “Once the individual sections were made, a series of interlocking keys ensured the pieces located themselves underwater. The challenge was to get each piece to not weigh more than 12 tons.” To aid marine navigation, he also affixed a solar light and flag to the sculpture’s apex.
Commissioned by the Bahamas Reef Environment Education Foundation in honor of its founder Sir Nicholas Nuttall, “Ocean Atlas” is part of an ongoing, environmentally friendly underwater sculpture garden that also includes works by local artists Willicey Tynes, Andret John, and Reefball. Its texture, designed to aid coral polyps to attach to its surface after spawning, encourages the colonization of reefs. Taylor intends for his work to draw tourists away from natural reef areas, which face environmental stresses from global warming, overfishing, and water pollution, among other threats.
Ocean Atlas Jason deCaires Taylor Nassau Bahamas 004 copy
“The aim was to show the vital role the local community and especially the younger generation have in conserving the islands’ natural resources,” Taylor wrote.
Previously, he has planted hundreds of underwater sculptures throughout the waters of the world that respond to environmental concerns and aim to relieve ocean stresses. His first and unprecedented underwater sculpture park was created in 2006, submerged off the coast of Grenada. Today, it features a ring of children holding hands, a man at work on his typewriter, and a still life of fruit. In 2009, he co-founded the Museo Subacuatico de Arte, home to over 500 of his sculptures, sprawled on the seabed off the coast of Cancun. “Ocean Atlas,” resting permanently in the waters of the Bahamas, represents a considerable increase in size from these previous works.
Ocean Atlas Jason deCaires Taylor Nassau Bahamas 001 copyOcean Atlas Jason deCaires Taylor Nassau Bahamas 006 copy IMGL8563 3Atlas_Jason deCaires Taylor_Sculpture.IMGL9390_Jason deCaires Taylor_Sculpture.









http://www.forbes.com/sites/clairevoon/2014/10/21/the-worlds-largest-underwater-sculpture-is-also-an-artificial-reef/

Statue and sculpture with people in rare poses. Need a laugh today ?

http://www.brainjet.com/random/4606/21-perfect-pose-pictures-with-statues?til=d-df-4606#slide/0
always funny to see interesting photos
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bronze mascot school statues
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05 September 2014

BEWARE RIPOFF FRAUD from http://www.asajanbronze.com/ Takes money but never delivers

BEWARE RIPOFF FRAUD from http://www.asajanbronze.com/
Asajan Bronze is a Bangkok Thailand foundry that has been imploding. They have taken deposits from www.allclassics.com and http://www.bronzewestimports.com/ several other exporters and never delivered any merchandise.
KNOW if you give a deposit, YOU WILL NOT GET WHAT YOU PAID FOR !

15 August 2014

Don't lose your head sculputue. Mascot to Russia lost his giant head Missing 3.5 ton head, How did they move it?

  Missing 3.5-tonne Lenin head thwarts expo
Have you seen this head? Photo: DPA

Missing 3.5-tonne Lenin head thwarts expo

Published: 15 Aug 2014 08:24 GMT+02:00
Updated: 15 Aug 2014 08:24 GMT+02:00


Due to open in the spring, “Unveiled. Berlin and its monuments“ will incorporate 100 original exhibits dating to the era of the Kaiser's Empire, the Weimar Republic, the National Socialist period and the former East Germany.
The Lenin head cut from red Ukrainian granite was to be a focal point of the event - but it has now been reported missing.
Its last known location was in the Köpenick Forest on the southwest edge of Berlin, where it was buried with 128 more pieces of the 19-metre statue, which was dismantled after the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991. The city government is not willing to undertake the search.
To find it again would take “extensive probing and exploratory excavations” that the city is not in a position to undertake financially, technically, or in time for the exhibition's spring opening, said Berlin's top official for the protection of monuments, Jörg Haspel.
It would also take too much work and expense to sufficiently restore once found, he told the newspaper. Furthermore, his department had decided that while the monument's location was supposedly not known, its dismembered parts should all remain together.
The organizers of the exhibition were nonplussed by the news that Russian revolutionary's head will be absent from the line-up.
“I am bitterly disappointed that we are only now hearing about this decision and that this central object cannot be displayed in the exhibition,” said Andrea Theissen, the head of the Spandau’s office for art.
The event has received €14 million funding from the Brandenburg government, the EU and from lottery ticket sales.
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Amazing sculpture bronze art from around the world. Mascot monumental sculpture BigBronze AllClassics Bronzemascot

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/33OlUx/151g6l!!c:5QecvZ@-/news.distractify.com/culture/sculptures




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