Seeking Refuge in Liberty's Colossus
by Marie-Adele Moniot
When the French artist Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (1834–1904) first conceived of his immense paean to liberty, the grande dame of New York Harbor, he envisioned a bold, iconic sculpture, like the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Since his youth, when he first visited the Middle East, Bartholdi had been fascinated by the ambition of the region's monuments. The sheer scale of those structures seemed to impress him most, and, in his mind, this physicality was inseparable from the equally grand ideas and emotional resonance that underscored every large-scale sculpture.
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Angel of the North: An Icon for Great Britain?
by Tuck Langland
If you drive north up the east side of England heading for Scotland, as you approach Newcastle-on-Tyne and the town of Gateshead, you suddenly see, rising majestically ahead, the giant figure of the Angel of the North, by Antony Gormley. This quasi-abstract figurative sculpture stands 66-feet-high, with spreading flat “wings” extending 177-feet-wide like a welcoming embrace. The overall impact is of a strong silhouette against the sky, which, on driving closer, reveals an intricate inner structure of cross braces.
There is ample parking, so you can leave your car and walk right up to the piece, feel the steel, touch the ribs that rise, like those of a great cathedral, all the way up to the head high overhead. Not all mega-sculptures allow this close personal contact.
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Three Large Sculptures
by Elizabeth Helm
At 64-feet-long, 25-feet-high, and 15-feet-6 inches-high, respectively, these three new sculptures aren't mega-sized, but they are big. The works, by Richard Loffler, Edward Fraughton, and Dora Natella are making an impact at their locations, two of them (Loffler's and Fraughton's) are installed permanently; the Natella is currently part of an exhibition).
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Fabricating Large-Scale Sculptures: Unites Craft and Technology
by Ruth E. Thaler-Carter
Mega sculptures offer a variety of special challenges for artists, their clients, and their publics. In the past, making a larger-than-life-size sculpture involved casting and assembling pieces in bronze, plaster, concrete, ceramic-all materials with their own beauty and other advantages, but certain disadvantages as well. Today, technology has made it possible to create mega sculptures in materials that are increasingly durable, lighter in weight, and stronger than many natural or traditional materials, with greater accuracy and at lower cost. The process of adapting an artist's idea into a mega sculpture also is changing as technology provides new ways to approach such substantial projects.
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