“You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! Damn ple rule of thumb to making monuments of extreme you all to hell!” Oh, my mistake. This isn’t a post- proportions: “when in doubt, make it stout.” And stout apocalyptic world where apes rule, but rather the they are. His statue of Sam Houston uses five layers parking lot behind artist David Adickes’ studio near of concrete poured over steel mesh attached to a downtown Houston. welded steel framework — over 30 tons of material.
Adickes is from the bigger-is-better school of mak- Given the extra challenge of scale, why the ing. In addition to a 67-foot-tall statue of Sam Houston fixation on gigantic statues? “What I am trying to in Huntsville, Texas, and 43 busts standing 20 feet tall prove,” says Adickes, “is the same thing Frederic-at Presidents Park in Williamsburg, Va., and the Black Auguste Bartholdi, the creator of the Statue of Hills of South Dakota, Adickes has big plans for a Liberty, was trying to prove: think big, do it right, 36-foot-tall statue of the Beatles, a giant four-person people will come. Today, 108 years later, the Statue bust of historic figures alongside a busy highway he’ll of Liberty is an icon, and two million people take a call Mount Rush Hour, and a 280-foot-tall cowboy, boat to visit it every year. Two years after Bartholdi, which would be the largest statue in North America Gustave Eiffel built a tower in Paris. Vehemently (the Statue of Liberty is about half as tall). criticized, it later became the symbol of France.”
A young 79, Adickes fell in love with gigantism Whether Adickes’ works will endure the test of after visiting Mount Rushmore. But he soon found time like Bartholdi and Eiffel remains to be seen, but out that creating Rushmore-sized sculptures was no there is no question that his titanic figurines make easy feat. He started Sam Houston in 1992 without for big attractions and big impressions — just follow really knowing how to pull it off. the line of tourists. —William Lidwell
“It was really a work of engineering without any blueprint,” he says. So Adickes learned to apply a sim- >>List of related sites: makezine.com/06/made
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