Bronze Bust Sculpture of Frank Zappa Unveiled in Baltimore

Baltimore honors late rocker Frank Zappa with bust
BEN NUCKOLS

The Associated Press

BALTIMORE - Rocker Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore but gained greater popular acclaim in Europe than in the United States. On Sunday, devout European fans of the late musician brought his mustachioed likeness back home in the form of a bronze bust.

Several hundred fans gathered on a sweltering afternoon as city officials dedicated the bust of the ponytailed rocker outside an east Baltimore library. The bust is a replica of another in a public square in Vilnius, Lithuania, and was donated to the city by Zappa enthusiasts in the small Baltic nation.

"The spirit of Frank Zappa is alive and well in Baltimore," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.

The mayor joined Zappa's widow, Gail, and three of his grown children in watching as a curtain was drawn back to reveal the bust set atop a 12-foot steel pole. Later, Zappa's son, Dweezil, took the stage with his tribute band, Zappa Plays Zappa.

Zappa was known for everything from novelty rock songs to elaborate classical compositions. He died of prostate cancer in 1993 at 52.

Sunday's ceremony marked the 25th anniversary of Zappa's testimony before Congress on freedom of expression for recording artists, though the scheduling was coincidental. Zappa had testified against proposed warning labels about lyrical content, calling them a path to censorshiop.

Libraries were a vital resource for Zappa, who had no formal music education, Gail Zappa told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Zappa would have appreciated the bizarre way he came to be honored in his birthplace, his widow said. Zappa's songs were known for their quirky, humorous lyrics: One of his biggest hits was "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow." Yet his music was also a favorite of the avant-garde.

"He'd be wildly amused by this, because of the absurdity of these guys in Lithuania coming up with this phenomenal sculptor who normally does busts of Stalin," Gail Zappa said.

Zappa's daughter, Diva, choked up while addressing a throng that chanted Zappa's name.

"Thank you so much for just loving my dad," she said.

Also at the ceremony were the mayor of Vilnius and Saulius Paukstys, the longtime president of a Lithuanian Zappa fan club who commissioned the original statue.

He has described the effort to erect the bust in Vilnius in the early 1990s as a test of the former Soviet republic's fledgling independence. The Baltimore dedication, he said, was a great day "for art, the human mind and democracy."

Helen Urban, 61, of Silver Spring, was among the Zappa fans in the crowd and saw the original bust during a trip to Lithuania last year. The replica is in a better location, Urban said.

"They have it sitting in the parking lot of a hospital," she said. "It's ugly as sin, but it's cool."

Gail Zappa, on the other hand, finds it beautiful.

"The guy was inspired," she said of sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas. "It's more than a likeness. It captured the force of his personality and his will in terms of being an artist."



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WHEN MASCOTS ATTACK!! Ohio's Mascot exacts justice on Brutus the Buckeye

OHIO STATE BUCKEYE MASCOT GETS TACKLED BY RIVAL MASCOT



In what was easily the best tackle of the day for the Ohio U. Bobcats, their mascot, Rufus laid a lick on Brutus the Buckeye of Ohio State that A.J. Hawk would be proud of. The motivation? Just to do what was done, tackle Brutus. In a strange twist, the young man that donned the Bobcat suit made it his life's ambition to tackle Brutus. Enjoy your 15 seconds of fame pal.

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Copper Pricing Continues to Rise Bronze Prices Affected

COPPER PRICES CONTINUE TO TREND UPWARD

Over the last 2 months the price of copper has steadily climbed back above $3/lb. That price is reflective of the raw price, with the price of refined, workable copper being close to, if not more than, triple that $3 mark. As the main componenent of bronze, this greatly affects the pricing of statuary created in bronze. Taking advantage of prices based on the old market value of copper would be wise as once the current crop of merchandise is sold the new pieces are likely to increase greatly in cost.

For great deals on bronze statues, fountains, and sculptures visit bigbronze.com.

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Bart Walter Sculpture of Lion and Boy

Carroll County sculptor brings wild imagination to Westminster Library
By Jay R. Thompson

Drivers on Main Street in Westminster will soon notice an addition to the downtown decor.

A life-size bronze lion will be sitting like a majestic sentinel atop a granite pedestal near the entrance of the Westminster Library.

"It really was a library-inspired piece," said Lisa Back, a spokeswoman for the Carroll County Public Library system.

"At the base of the lion is a young boy who is reading a book," she said. "It's a physical representation of books transporting us to other worlds."

The sculpture "Wild Imaginings" was created by Westminster artist Bart Walter, who's been a full-time professional sculptor for three decades, during which time he's done about a dozen pieces of this scale.

"We thought it was important to use local artists to keep it tied to the community," Back said.

The lion will sit atop a polished, black granite pedestal that's about 3 feet tall. The top of the lion will be about 8 feet above ground level.

"I'm sure visitors will notice the lion first, and I hope it will communicate a real lion to them," said Walter, who has created works for The Smithsonian National Zoo, in Washington, the National Museum of Wildlife Art, in Jackson Hole, Wyo., the Maryland Zoo, in Baltimore, and Northwest Middle School, in Taneytown.

"But then they'll notice the boy and wonder about the boy in the context of a lion, and hopefully think about reading and how it can transport you to anywhere you want to be," he said.

"For children, hopefully it will open up their imagination," he said.

Walter knows what it's like to be transported by books.

"I grew up in Baltimore," he said. "I was stuck in the city all week and I became a mental traveler through books."

Walter's sculpture will be unveiled Friday, Sept. 17, at 3 p.m. at a ribbon cutting ceremony celebrating the completion of the library's renovation.

The Westminster branch is 30 years old, Back said.

"It was showing its age inside as well as outside," she said. Over the course of about three years, the library's roof has been replaced, lighting was improved, accessibility and walkways were improved, and the public spaces inside were renovated, including the children's area.

"You go through a tunnel to go into the children's area," Back said.

The cost of the renovation, not including the sculpture, was around $1.6 million, paid for with a state grant and with matching funds from the county.

"The final stage is the re-landscaping of the park in front of the branch," Back said.

The sculpture was paid for with private donations -- with a healthy discount from the artist himself, who said normally, a piece this size can run hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"We did it as a favor to a local institution that we enjoy and have enjoyed for a long time," Walter said. "I was just trying to help them make it happen."

The sculpture echoes a tradition of putting lion statues at the entrances of buildings.

"Sculptures have been used as guardians of libraries and art museums for well over 100 years," Walter said.

Some notable examples of lion statues as guardians are at the New York Public Library and at the Baltimore Museum of Art, putting the Westminster branch among grand company.

"Coming to the library should be more of an event than an errand," Back said.

"Wild Imaginings" is the first of four sculptures the Westminster branch library hopes to purchase from local artists.

The next piece will be carved on site next summer from limestone contributed by the Lehigh Cement Company in Union Bridge. The library is still searching for an artist and an artwork for that block of stone, Back said.



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As Sculptures Proliferate in College Football, the Bar for Legends Dips; Casting Danny Wuerffel

Enough With the Statues, Already

By DARREN EVERSON

There's nothing wrong with commissioning a statue in honor of the late Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, who is universally regarded as one of the icons of college football.

Anyone who doesn't have a heart of stone would have supported Marshall's decision to display a memorial to the members of the 1970 football team who died in a plane crash.

But when a conversation about football statuary starts to veer toward the likes of Nick Saban, Danny Wuerffel and Tim Tebow, it's probably time to stop, locate the nearest paper bag and breathe into it.

If you need any more evidence that college football is in the midst of a new era of blind extravagance and euphoric self-congratulation, all you have to do is start counting statues.

A growing number of schools across the nation have decided they aren't content to reward winning coaches by paying them millions of dollars—or to honor their recent star players by retiring jersey numbers. The latest technique is to send a few still photos to the neighborhood sculptor.

By the end of the season, Alabama hopes to honor its current football coach of three seasons, Mr. Saban, with a statue outside Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa. This is something the school has done for its other national-title-winning coaches. It was initially thought the statue might be up already, but it's still being molded because earlier renderings weren't quite right. "It looked like Robert De Niro," a school official said.

Florida, Alabama's top competition in the Southeastern Conference in recent years, is close to completing statues of the school's three Heisman Trophy winners—Steve Spurrier (1966), Mr. Wuerffel (1996) and Mr. Tebow (2007).

Oklahoma, meanwhile, is becoming statue central. Four of the Sooners' Heisman winners have gotten them since 2005; a fifth, of 2008 winner Sam Bradford, is on the way. Oklahoma also plans statues of four of its coaches over the next year, including Bob Stoops, the current coach.

The schools say the statues dress up stadiums, giving them a formal "front door" that celebrates their history. They say fans delight in snapping photos of the statues. They also note that these artworks are paid for in an appropriate manner: Mr. Saban's statue, which will cost about $50,000, is being funded by the Crimson Tide Foundation via private donations. So it's not like tuition increases are supporting this. "I'd just say that, right or wrong, the thing that brings a lot of immediate attention to a university is its athletic programs," says Alabama athletic director Mal Moore. "It's a way of recognizing that success."

It's obviously debatable, of course—especially in the case of Mr. Saban, who was coaching at rival LSU just a few seasons ago. "Saban statue is too much, too soon," said the headline of a Birmingham News column earlier this year.

"It's a dangerous precedent about the statement of football over academics," says author Chris Warner, an LSU alumnus and SEC football fan who wrote a book about conference tailgating. "We're building monuments to coaches. It's a pretty good indicator of where we are."

Traditionally, statues have been erected for football legends long after their playing careers or after decades of service, like the late Grambling coach Eddie Robinson, who had a museum opened in his memory in February on the school's Louisiana campus. Penn State's 83-year-old coach Joe Paterno, whose 18th-ranked Nittany Lions visit Mr. Saban's top-ranked Tide in a highly anticipated game on Saturday, had a statue unveiled in his honor in 2001.

Others have been immortalized in bronze or stone after a tragic death. Nebraska found a way to honor a revered former coach in tandem with a fallen former player: A 2006 statue depicts Tom Osborne, the school's all-time winningest coach, instructing quarterback Brook Berringer, who died in a 1996 plane crash at age 22.

Two years ago, Syracuse unveiled a statue of star running back Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman winner, who died of leukemia less than two years after winning the 1961 award. It was a fine subject, but there was just one problem: The statue depicted Davis wearing modern football equipment, including Nike shoes. (Nike didn't exist when Davis played.) The mistake was later corrected.

In 2003, Washington honored former coach Jim Owens with a statue, an event that spurred an NAACP protest. Mr. Owens had been accused of racism in 1969 for suspending four black players for a perceived lack of loyalty. Mr. Owens, who died last year, apologized at the unveiling.

Some subjects have approached these honors with humility. Mr. Wuerffel, the former Florida star, now works with Desire Street Ministries, a group that works to transform inner-city neighborhoods through what it calls "spiritual development." He says statues on campus shouldn't be limited to football players like him. "There are countless unsung heroes in our world that don't get the public attention that athletes and entertainers do."

"You don't have the statue there to idolize," says ESPN analyst and former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz, who received one in 2008. "You have it to remind people of the tradition."

Mr. Saban's planned statue is a symbol of changing times. It used to be that no Alabama coach was worthy of mention in the same breath as Bryant, an Alabama player who returned and won six national titles there. But Bryant has been gone so long—he died in 1983—that Mr. Saban is all many Alabama students know, says Paul Finebaum, a Birmingham radio host and columnist.

And so public opinion about the Saban statue, which Mr. Finebaum says is mostly in favor, is somewhat split by age. "People 50 or above say, 'I don't have a problem with it, but don't you think we ought to wait?' " says Mr. Finebaum. "The young people wonder: Why doesn't he have a statue already?"




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NEW SCULPTURES IN-STOCK!

We just got our summer load in with all sorts of beautiful statues, sculptures, and fountains including three pieces we feel will really be a hit! The first is a pair of 7 foot tall Roman or Greek centurion's. They're a perfect piece for a school as mascots or to guard the entrance of a home or office. The second, our exclusive design, is a statue of two children, or brother and sister if you will, with the older boy giving the younger girl a piggyback ride. This makes a great addition to a park, schoolyard, or public space. And, finally we have our box turtle piece, also our design, which is a great little piece for a garden, landscape, or inside your home. Check them all out at our website for pricing!

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