Detroit's future has a silver lining: a statue of its legendary protector, Robocop. Denied funding by the cash-strapped city, the project's supporters set up a kickstarter project, which is already nearly half way to its $50,000 goal.
The project came to be after a tweet sent to Detroit's mayor requesting the erection of said statue got a reply—in the negative. A Facebook group later and an offer of land by the Imagination Station (near Michigan Central Station) and the statue could soon be a done deal.
None of us have ever made a giant solid metal permanent sculpture before. It turns out to be a pretty expensive process (who would have thought?), but not too much for the world to fund. After talking to numerous sculptors and metal workers, the current game plan is this: We can take a relatively small figure of RoboCop (conceivably even an action figure), have it 3D scanned by lasers (cool!) and scale its form to create a light-weight model of any size we'd like, which can then be used to pour and cast liquid metal.
Casey V. Westbrook and crew are currently leading the charge to create a weatherized 7 foot tall iron statue. Take a look at his work here. The last project Casey worked on was an epic action installation with Matthew Barney in Detroit. See a picture and read about it in Art Forum here.
People who pledge $100 will get a limited edition T-shirt with original artwork by project organizer John Leonard. $35 gets you a commemorative pin.
Detroit needs a Robocop statue [Kickstarter.]
