Sculpture
Hugh McManaway
Up-cycled sculpture for Charlotte SHOUT Arts Festival 2022
Materials:
- Structure: 3/4″ plywood & chicken wire
- Hat: Spoon & fork bottoms
- Head/Face/Hands: Aluminum can strips
- Hair: Fork tops
- Glasses: Skewers
- Ears/Belt Buckle: Bottom of aluminum can
- Sweater: Spoon tops
- Undershirt: coffee bags
- Tie/Belt: Pop tabs
- Belt loops: spoon bottoms
- Pants: Coffee bags
- Shoes: Corks
- Towels: towel used when Carla shipped me spoons
Hugh McManaway
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a man who directed traffic uninvited for 20 years at the intersection of Queens & Providence in Myers Park, Charlotte, NC
The Meaning
Upcycled Arts and Charlotte is Creative invited TuxedoKat to create one of nine famous Charlotte landmarks for their “The Queen’s Greens” 9-hole putt putt course debuted during Charlotte’s biggest arts and culture festival, Charlotte SHOUT 2022.
Out of all the awesome options to build, TuxedoKat chose Hugh McManaway for two reasons. 1.: What little TuxedoKat knew about Hugh, she knew he was celebrated in the Myers Park community and wanted to honor his memory in taking on building his shapely figure. 2.: TuxedoKat’s mother, father & brother-in-law grew up knowing Hugh during his reign directing traffic and shared a bunch of stories.
We visited the real Hugh on Queens & Providence in Myers Park, Charlotte NC to get some pictures and measurements.
We projected Hugh onto 3/4″ plywood to create shape and structure.
TuxedoKat had fun cutting Hugh out of the plywood with a jigsaw.
Hugh’s head needed to be bent forward to match the statue, so we tried weights in water overnight.
We then attached the extended and bent arms.
After eight hours, a wire structure was build around the wooden structure to create Hugh’s shape.
Chicken wire was added to create a solid “skin” around the wire strokes for shape and extra stability.
Aluminum cans were sliced into strips and added to the chicken wire to create Hugh’s skin.
Over 400 spoons, 36 coffee, bags, an uncounted amount of pop tabs, corks, and aluminum cans came together to create High’s final facade.
Hugh was painted a brown base-layer with added bronze and gold spray-painted overlay accents.
To add texture, gold paint was smudged and dabbed over his brown/bronze/gold spray-paint base-layer.
A final layer of MAS Epoxy was added to weatherproof and add extra hold for the external materials to the chicken wire base-layer.
TuxedoKat poses with a finished Hugh!
Upon delivery to Wells Fargo Plaza in Uptown Charlotte, TuxedoKat added the final vinyl attributions and explainations to Hugh’s box.
The family posing with a finished Hugh set up on Hole #4 in Charlotte SHOUT!’s “The Queen’s Greens” 9-hole putt putt course.
“The Queen’s Greens” was packed opening weekend.