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Sunday, May 11, 2008
To Beijing, by Way of Duke City
By Wesley Pulkka
For the Journal
North Carolina sculptor Jon Hair and Albuquerque metals fabricator Joe Doyle are building “Lucky Eight,” a 12-foot-tall aluminum abstract sculpture for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Hair was invited to exhibit his sculpture by the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee.
“When I was asked to build a piece for the Olympics I researched Chinese mythology, where I discovered the figure eight is an auspicious number symbolizing good fortune and healing,” Hair said. “When I showed the committee my design, they loved the piece.”
Hair and Doyle are completing the project at Pace Ironworks in Albuquerque's South Valley, where Doyle is part owner and shop manager.
The welded aluminum design is made up of two three-dimensional ovals intersecting at right angles to form a figure eight. When viewers visit the sculpture they will see the figure eight in cast shadows as well as throughout the sculpture itself. The final finish includes multiple coats of high-quality automotive chameleon-colored enamel. The special paint finish will change colors as viewers walk around the sculpture.
“This is going to be one of the wildest things that people have ever seen,” Doyle said recently.
Doyle, whose father was an art teacher, began his career as a structural steel worker and branched out to build custom projects. At one point Doyle exhibited his own lizard sculptures in 26 galleries around the country, with sales hitting 200 pieces a month.
“I got bored making those lizards and began looking for a larger challenge. When I met Jon a few years ago we understood each other right away and started working together,” Doyle said.
Their first mutual project was an Atlas sculpture for High Point University in North Carolina. Using Hair's drawings and designs, Doyle built the globe that Atlas carries on his back. The hollow sphere was assembled in sections and included an open work world map in mild steel with a baked epoxy finish known as powder coating. The figure of Atlas was cast in bronze by Hair at his 7,000-square-foot North Carolina studio.
For Hair, the Olympics in China is just another chapter in his storybook career as a successful musician, advertising artist and, most recently, monumental sculptor.
He grew up with five siblings in a basement in Iowa, where his mother abandoned them all while his father was building an American Air Force Base in Greenland.
“We were put in an orphanage for a while until my dad came home, and then we were divided up among relatives,” Hair recalls. “My older brother and I ended up with an uncle who had spent time in prison. He was pretty rough on us until I found out my mother was remarried to a Florida musician, and we ran away to meet her new husband.”
Hair's stepfather introduced the 14-year-old drummer to other musicians and let Hair sit in occasionally. Those early years on stage led to gigs with Simon and Garfunkel, Jonathan Edwards and The Main Ingredient.
Hair majored in fine art at the Ohio State University and the Columbus School of Art & Design.
He's is a youthful 58-year-old who took sculpture seriously at age 49 after walking away from his more than 20-year award-winning career as an advertising artist and designer. His client list was a who's who of corporate America.
“I just couldn't do it anymore. I went home to my wife and said I was letting my creative inner beast out and intended to follow it. She said OK, and our lives have been getting better ever since,” Hair said.
His success in sculpture is the result of tireless discipline and absolute resolve on his part.
Best known for his figurative and animal sculptures, Hair has been commissioned to do portraits of Ted Turner, Dick Van Dyke and life-size standing portraits of Mark Twain, Amelia Earhart, Aristotle, John Wesley, Madame Curie and William Shakespeare.
Other works include a huge heroic-scale lion for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, a multiple-figure heroic sculpture titled “Olympic Strength” for the United States Olympic Training Grounds in Colorado Springs and countless other monuments.
“As far as I'm concerned we're just getting started. At this point I've established a launch platform for the real work to come.”
The piece for the Beijing Olympics will be installed in the the Beijing International Sculpture Park in June and dedicated in August.
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