Blue Sky Gallery

“Kawasakisaurus”

Site-Specific Sculpture
South Carolina Bank and Trust, Gervais St.
(Corner of Pulaski and Senate Sts.)
Columbia, SC
50' x 6'
24,000 lbs.
Unveiled 2003

Notice: To those of you wondering why this sculpture disappeared - the bank decided to bury it beneath sod, fully intact, in Spring 2007. We suppose this has transformed the artwork into the most literal interpretation of its subject. Future excavators will enjoy the irony of unearthing an archaeological site. But personally, I doubt so much wit was behind the decision to bury it. - Jesse

Blue Sky, on 'Kawasakisaurus'
When South Carolina Bank and Trust was excavating for their new building to go downtown, I contacted their architect and asked him if I could do an earthwork sculpture beside the bank. The architect asked me to go over the plans and see which spot would work best and I chose a spot where the land dropped off most drastically. The bank chipped in $2,000 to help cover the cost of materials and I paid the rest out of my own pocket, working for 3 months to complete it.

The idea was to create the illusion that during the process of excavating for the new bank, archeologists had discovered an ancient skeleton resembling a dinosaur. To fabricate the “skeleton” I used sixteen abandoned motorcycles which had been stored at the old razed City Garage on the exact site the bank was to be built. The motorcycles were then embedded in concrete, which was then shaped into the form of the vertebrae of a dinosaur. The head of the dinosaur was formed by a Volkswagen Bug fender with a headlight opening being the eye socket. Then the concrete was sealed with a cemeteous paint to resemble bleached bones. Next, pure white sand was hauled in by truck to cover the skeleton. At this point I consulted with a couple of archeologists at the University of South Carolina on how to prepare a proper dig site. The site is complete with a coding system, gridded off with wire, a wheel barrow is nearby, and a surveyors measuring rod is installed to make the whole site look like a dig is in progress and the skeleton has been partly uncovered.

Since several of the sixteen motorcycles were Kawasaki’s, I decided to name the project Kawasakisaurus so that future paleontologists might believe there once roamed a morphed behemoth half animal, half machine. The site is illuminated at night by several 500 watt quartz lamps which are activated by motion detectors.

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“Kawasakisaurus”

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