IN 1998 the Alaska State Fair celebrated the 1898 Gold Rush and commissioned me to do a larger than life statue on that theme for the main plaza. This is what I did.
Click on thumbnails to see large size
This was the largest project I ever took on and it had to be competely done in six weeks!
The figures stand an average of seven feet , the whole peice from the ground to the miners hat is over twelve.It has a group of Gold Rush miners working a sluice box. The sluice box features running water or what's called in the "business" a "water feature".
Here is another view of the whole thing which is made of a concrete matrix, stained a redish brown and textured.
There are four main characters displayed . A guy shoveling raw materials into the sluice box, another one panning the fine sediment for gold , a woman carrying two buckets of stuff to be poured in the sluice box and a dog.Everybody's working but the dog.
The rock base is made of wooden frame and wire lathe which holds the cement and allows for a hollow space within. These pieces come apart into five modules which are bolted together on site. This thing was built in Homer, taken apart , shipped to the Fair and reassembled. Fortunately that all worked out well. You can see the water coming out of the sluice box here.
Inside the base is a rubber swimming pool and a pump which sends the water up one leg of the sluice box, down the chute, into a pool and back inside. Here is a view of shovel man behind gold panner man.
Fianlly here is the dog. He was modelled after my dog at the time, Partner. RIP.
I like sculpting very much but I was a wreck after this whole thing . At one point during the process we had to destroy the whole base and start over. It was a normal day.
