Texas sculptor David Adickes hopes his latest creation -- Dixie's newest tourist attraction -- isn't a big bust.
Presidents Park has been a headache for his creator and his backers as they fought legal and cultural battles for nearly a decade to reach last week's official opening of the US$10 million collection of mammoth statuary.
Heads have rolled -- across the country on flatbed trucks -- to populate this park with gigantic busts of all 43 presidents. How big are the concrete busts? Heights of around 6m, not counting the bases, and weights in the 3,401kg range. You could step on Abraham Lincoln's bow tie, grab an ear, climb on his beard, edge across his eyebrows and slide down his nose if you didn't mind a drop of more than 3m to the ground.
Adickes -- whose works include the sculpture of former President George H.W. Bush at the Houston International Airport and the 23m-tall statue of Sam Houston in Huntsville, Texas -- says size is "in my DNA."
For his next major project, for instance, he aims to create the world's biggest statue. This "generic cowboy" will be the height of a 28-story building and be located in San Marcos, Texas, about midway between Austin and San Antonio. The 85m-tall cowboy would stand near Interstate-35, he said, and be seen by millions of motorists. Big art has more "impact," the 77-year-old sculptor explained.
Adickes got the idea for giant presidential busts after visiting Mount Rushmore and not being able to get as close as he wanted.
"I was driving back to Texas from South Dakota," he said, when it hit him: "Wouldn't it be great to make statues of our presidents to be placed in a garden, at eye level, so we could really see them, study them, intimately and up close?"
He decided that this scenic, historic region would be a perfect setting. Millions of tourists already flock here to see Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown -- carefully maintained landmarks in the story of early America. He found a wooded spot near some less historic attractions -- Water Country and Busch Gardens, amusement parks. He found a partner, local businessman Everette Newman III, who had developed Water Country and owned a Days Inn near the proposed site of Presidents Park.
However, when Adickes brought his idea and several sample presidential busts to Tidewater, Virginia about five years ago, some local folks tried to head off the project. They called it "tacky" among other things.
The proposed Presidents Park would be "like P.T. Barnum meets Easter Island," editorialized the Williamsburg Daily Press. "Veto the Presidents," the paper urged. Washington Post columnist Jonathan Yardley called it a "presidential Stonehenge."
Ivor Noel Hume, the retired residential archaeologist for Colonial Williamsburg, called the proposal "the tackiest project to exploit and pollute America's heritage" since Pocahontas "was turned into a musical."
County officials declared that the proposed Presidents Park would be an "outdoor commercial amusement," like a go-cart track or carnival rides or miniature golf course and needed a special use permit. Such a permit was unlikely to be granted. So Newman and Adickes went to court, arguing that Presidents Park would be an outdoor museum or sculptural garden.
On Sept. 8, 2000, Circuit Judge Prentis Smiley ruled that the park could in fact be built without a special use permit.
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