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september of 1999 i received an email from the garfield
group, a pr firm specializing in dot com companies. their client, switchboard.com,
was interested in having a large papier mache' sculpture made as part of
an on-site promotion at a monday night football game. the venue was
foxboro stadium; the game was jets vs. patriots. being a boston-area
based company, switchboard thought it would be great to get behind the
"home team" and have the sculpture depicting a large patriot
"grilling the 'tuna'"-the "tuna" referring to
bill parcells, the head coach of the jets at the time.
originally, the idea was to have me show up at the stadium (the promotion activity was right outside the stadium) with the large (eight foot tall!) sculpture half completed and demonstrate the gluing of old yellow pages (right, from a phone book) onto the sculpture. the reason for the yellow pages fits in with theme of "think outside the book"- switchboard.com's slogan (incidentally, switchboard.com is a search engine type website that specializes in finding phone numbers and addresses for businesses and individuals). well, after the realization of how long it would take to paper the piece, we decided to just do the painting at the event. but then, with the unpredictability of the weather (with the game being held in November) we decided to just finish the whole thing ahead of time and display some photos of the process along with the sculpture itself. so here we are. top (1): sculptor/genius stands with some of the raw materials dreaming of the sculpture and the day he can actually afford some decent clothes. 2:to assist in transportation, i decided to construct the patriot in two parts, the top half from waist up and the bottom waist down. the large forms made from chicken wire. i had some scrap pieces of expanded polystyrene (eps) lying around, so i used these to "stuff" the chest cavity to prevent sagging of the piece as i added layers of wet, glue soaked paper. 3. the bottom half with the yellow pages is starting to take shape. Quin looks on with approval. 4. the waist section had 3/4 inch plywood with dowels sticking out from the bottom which fit into holes in the top section. here's a "trial fit". 5. the top section is starting to take shape. he's a broad fellow. the thing was six feet wide! 6 & 7. this is out of sequence. this shows the wire and polystyrene-stuffed armature. I'm six foot two. you can see the scale in which i'm working. 8. this is the head after the first layer of paper. the head also had a plywood base that allowed you to remove it. 9. That's me standing next to the finished piece at foxboro stadium the night of the game. it was 33 degrees with a strong wind and snow flurries. the pats lost the game, but the sculpture was received well. special thanks to paul culver (see twinscriptions) for taking this photo and for providing transportation to Massachusetts. i was told the patriot was to be put on display at the fleet center in boston. if anyone has seen it there, drop me a line.
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