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Because Luis Jiménez' large
public sculptures are commissioned by cities and organizations,
he needs to be able to show his ideas to committees or boards
before he produces them. Drawings and models help others imagine
how his finished sculptures might look.
For over five years Jiménez
has been developing an image for a memorial to Cleveland Firefighters.
Several years ago he produced a small three-dimensional model
showing a fireman attacking a towering flame. After the events
of September 11, 2001, the Cleveland firefighters wanted a
stronger focus on teamwork. Jiménez modified the design
to include two firefighters working together.
The artist and a representative of
the Cleveland Fire Department have communicated with each
other throughout the process of refining the image for the
memorial. The firefighter makes sure Jiménez gets all
the details of fire equipment and procedures just right. The
artist checks out ideas by sending drawings and measurements
to the firefighters. Here we see a larger and a smaller firefighter
standing by a cut out of the base for the memorial to confirm
its height and the prominence of names that will appear on
it.
Luis Jiménez has been commissioned
to make a huge sculpture of a rearing mustang to stand at
the entrance of Denver's new airport. The completed sculpture
will be much too large to be produced in Jiménez' 16'
high clay studio. He has made a 1/4 scale model to work out
how to construct the final piece in three sections: head,
legs, and body.
This steel armature will support the
legs and will be bolted to another armature built into the
body section, when all three pieces are complete and assembled.
This painted quarter-scale model
provides the viewer with a sense of how the large-scale mustang
will appear.
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