For this project, the process started once we knew what we might be able to do it.
I walked around the National Mall taking photographs of guys, and I was able to get a lot of different
people from different backgrounds. I was literally looking on the internet and I came across
Jorge's site, and I saw "Wish", the big project in Belfast, and I thought this is incredible.
This is somebody who is obviously thinking about what is a portrait
but in a way that is involving an entire community.
Once I had all the images from the people that I photographed, I started breaking those
down into elements that I liked from each one, the chin, the mouth, the nose.
The portrait gallery is changing, it's not just about the traditional pictures and paintings and sculptures
on the wall, of course we have that. It is somewhere where you can come and expect the
unexpected. One of the things that I wanted to do is to take it away from one person and
really turn it to everyone's story. The reason why a face, why do a portrait, it has to.
So now we've got in theory an artist and we have a place to put a picture but you need 2 thousand
tonnes of soil, 800 tonnes of top soil, 315 truck loads of sand and 120 truck loads of dirt approximately.
The way the piece is created is you have to cover the whole thing with
sand, that's the light tone, and then you have the (inaudible) come on. We found the steps to
take the data from art into the CAD world, and then use that computer image to cut out
here with our gps receivers to put it under the ground. Each vector is a peg,
put that in to connect it with string and that delineates where our soil goes or (inaudible).
We're using probably around 10 thousand pegs and about 8 miles of twine. Gps topography technology has gotten
to the point where it is so accurate. Taking a piece like this and bringing it to this
huge scale, it will look just like it looked on my computer screen.
That process then allows the (inaudible) to come in. Here, we're using tread (inaudible), which is great cause they leave no ruts
and they slowly just fill in those lines. Hopefully, with the amount of volunteers;
today we have 40 volunteers, I will be able to get about half the phase done where all
the lines are clean. That's the process.
On the National Mall, I think 99.9% of projects get turned down.
It really is a credit to the National park service and to the trust for the mall, they simply love this project and we were looking over our shoulder going:
Are you talking to us? And they said we love this project.
What better place to do this than right here on the National Mall, where people from all walks of lives and all nationalities
and all races have come together. The National Mall is everyone's front yard in America and
I think this project is a beautiful representation of that.
This is something that has never been done before and we wanted to be involved with it.
This is not the kind of thing that happens because I want it to happen.
Companies and people who give donations and volunteers come together to make it happen.
One of the things that I find beautiful is the experience when you walk through it. The portrait becomes secondary to the zen garden feel, that's something I really enjoy.
I think any artist, especially a portrait artist has a little bit of themselves in everything that they do
and this one (inaudible) a little bit more and also because it is also
my story, Coming when I was 3 years old from Cuba, growing up in New Jersey, meeting so
many diverse people from many parts of the world. You will be able to enjoy the piece
for about a month, walk through it, see it form the Washington monument, images from space,
and then it will be blended back into the location and let it be a fond memory.
We're moving into a new age of what a national portrait gallery is, what it does and how it can change people.