Improbable Monument Powerpoint

Improbable Monument Final Proposal

Shawn McCafferty

Art 410



Improbable Monument Proposal

United Airlines Flight 93 departed from Newark, New Jersey, for San Francisco, California on the morning of September 11, 2001. After being hijacked by four al Qaeda terrorists, the plane crashed in rural southwest Pennsylvania, killing its 37 passengers and 7 crew members. It was the only one of the four planes hijacked that day that did not crash into a building.

The passengers of Flight 93, informed of what had transpired at the World Trade Center that morning by means of mobile phone conversations with family, decided to forcefully resist the hijackers. According to accounts pieced together by the families, after calling "let's roll!", the passengers stormed the cockpit, and the plane crashed as a result of the valiant struggle inside.

The report of the United States 9-11 Commission issued on July 22, 2004 concluded that the passengers of Flight 93 never actually entered the cockpit, although they tried to breach the threshold by rolling the food cart into it. The committee's conclusion was that the hijackers deliberately crashed the plane when they judged that the passengers were only seconds away from overcoming them. It praised the heroism of the passengers, whose struggle prevented the plane from reaching Washington D.C., saving countless lives and possibly the Capitol or the White House.  

For my monument I want to give memory to those who passed in 9/11 on flight 93 which was scheduled to land in SFO International airport. I point this fact out because I wanted to bring the children, parents, and siblings of this flight home where they fought to be.  In my monument I want to honor these people by gathering 1-2 family members for each passenger and making a full sculpture cast of each one of them.  I would then place them in pairs around the airport on benches and in seats and waiting rooms.  I want to create an atmosphere in which a family would be at the airport waiting to welcome their loved ones.  Imagine a mother and father sitting in a terminal with their arms around their child in a group hug but the child was not in the middle of them.  Have a husband leaning over to kiss his long awaited wife but not have the wife on the other side of this kissing statue. Many ideas could be created and would cause a feeling of absence like something is missing. In fact there is something missing, a human being that didn't make it home.....

For one thing, the foundry process is very labor intensive. Once a completed clay sculpture is delivered to a foundry, the actual physical work of producing a finished bronze piece is only about 30% complete. Production steps at the foundry include: (1) Making a mold of the clay original (2) making a wax replica of the original, using the mold (3) chasing or smoothing the wax replica, removing mold marks etc. (4) making a ceramic mold around the wax replica. This takes several applications of ceramic slurry, which must dry between coats (5) firing the ceramic mold to drive out to wax replica (hence the term lost wax process) (6) pouring molten (about 1800 degrees F) bronze into the ceramic mold (7) after it hardens, removing the ceramic mold/shell by breaking and chipping it from the underlying bronze (8) welding the piece back together. In order to make a mold of, say, a horse, the legs, tail and probably the head must be molded separately; otherwise the mold could not be withdrawn from the original clay model. So appendages, protrusions etc. are severed from the original model and molded and cast separately, then welded back together after the bronze is poured. (9) chasing or smoothing the bronze piece. This consists of grinding off weld marks, ceramic mold marks and imperfections in the metal, as well as recreating such surface detail as hair or feathers that may have been obliterated by the welding and chasing. (10) sand blasting all or parts of the piece (11) an applying the coloration or patina. This is quite time consuming and, if done correctly, requires an artistic specialist who fires the oxides or acrylics onto the surface of the bronze with a huge blow torch. This phase is almost always done under the artist's supervision. (12) basing, or installing the piece onto the base, usually either wood or stone. Incidentally, the typical base costs for table model-sized bronze pieces are currently about $75 to $125. With labor charged at $65 to $85/hour all these steps add up.

The cost of materials is also a big factor, as the cost of bronze has skyrocketed over the past few years. Most bronze used in fine art casting is silicon bronze; 95% copper, 4% silicon and 1% manganese. The price of copper has risen 500% in just a few years from a low of near $.75 to around $3.50/lb currently.

Those are the hard costs of producing a piece of fine art bronze. Travel costs add up rapidly. So, add in the soft costs of Diesel fuel, motel rooms truck rentals, material costs, hourly wages, foundry usage and they add up quickly.

Total costs of the project is estimated at 1.5-2 million dollars. Each piece takes about 1-2 months to make, which by myself would take almost 4 years to make at least one family member for all 37 passengers and 7 crew members. With collaboration this time could be cut dramatically but costs would go up.  Cost of bronze is about 3.50/lbs and each piece will weigh roughly 275 lbs.  For one statue of 6ft it would cost about 1,000 dollars for the bronze alone.  With that estimated the total cost for each statue in bronze is about $40,000.  Material costs such as clay, wire, tools etc estimated at $20,000, transportation of statues $5,000, equipment such as foundries etc. $100,000, and labor costs estimated at 1 Million dollars.

Brain storm for Monument

For my monument i want to give memory to those who passed in 9/11 on flight 93 which was scheduled to land in SFO International airport. I point this fact out because i wanted to bring the children, parents, and siblings of this flight home where they fought to be.  In my monument i want to honor these people by gathering 2 family members for each passanger and making a full sculpture cast of each on of them.  I would then place them in pairs around the airport on benches and in seats and waiting rooms.  I want to create an atmosphere in which a family would be at the airport waiting to welcome their loved ones.  Imagine a mother and father sitting in a terminal with thier arms around their child in a group hug but the child was not in the middle of them.  Have a husband leaning over to kiss his long awaited wife but not have the wife on the other side of this kissing statue. Many ideas could be created and would cause a feeling of abscence like something is missing. In fact there is something missing, a human being that didn't make it home.....

My Culture Jam

For my Culture jam I decided to mess around with the Panda Express logo.  I had some issues working in Illustrator but i really wanted to stick with it in order to learn the program. I don't have color printing abilities so i decided to import my image into photoshop and show iconicly what i would really like to do if i had the ability or motivation to do some real street art.

Here is a Panda Express at a stadium that i thought would be a prime spot to pull a good Jam.

 

I also thought that it would be funny to jam in front of a drive through since the workers normally don't look at the drive through menu board.  It would be interesting to see the reactions of the people who drive through to get food and see the Dead Panda sign and decide not to eat there.

I picked this image because i wanted to make it a fight to the death. I think Beijing Beef will win, he has like 50 lbs on his opponent.