ARTLETTER, A Publication of the Art Department of California State University at Chico, 1991
“The Monoliths Have Landed”

Nineteen concrete monoliths – each weighing between four and eight thousand pounds – finally have found a home near the west entrance to Ayres Hall after three other locations fell through. Distinguished Visiting Professor Deborah Masters conceived of the project as a way of teaching Graduate Sculpture Students “all that I know about making public sculpture in one semester.” Below, Masters and four participating students discuss the project with Dolores Mitchell.

Mitchell: Deborah, what did you hope your students would learn by means of the monolith project?

Masters: Within the first week, I realized few of the students knew each other, and they came from so many backgrounds – architecture, construction, painting. I wanted a project that could pull the class together and came up with the monolith idea. I decided that if students leaned how to make steel armatures with clay bodies and plaster molds that they would cast into concrete, plus acquired some political and organizational skills of the sort I’d had to develop in New York while doing public commissions, in one semester they’d have all I could teach them.

Mitchell: What sort of support did you get from other people in the University?

Masters: The Plant Operations people were really wonderful in helping us with all the permits we needed. Brooks Thorlaksson always came to our aid, and Dean Heinz’s belief in the project really helped us.

Roberts: Robin Wilson was out there watching us often, and given moral support. Mitchell: Susan, your piece is figurative, while the other monoliths are quite abstract. Why?

Bardin: Mine is a cenotaph, showing a woman giving a little boy up to the heavens. It’s a memorial for a cousin of mine who drove to Florida in his van and was never seen again. Inside the monolith are some of my cousin’s clothes, a dirty shirt and bandana, an old love letter from his wife. My sculpture will help him to live in the hearts of his family, even if his body is never found.

Mitchell: Over the months, your site changed several times. How did you and students deal with that?

Masters: We’d all have to get together, build a new model overnight and become committed to the new idea, after having said: “Oh, we can’t possibly do it again.”

John Hubenthal: Then, no sooner did we have the site squared away on campus by the creek, when mysterious anonymous petitions appeared that were against erecting the pieces. We set up information tables and tried to build support for the sculptures.

Masters: I’m glad it happened. The result was very educational, the kinds of things sculptors always encounter in the real world.

Ross Roberts: I agree. The unity of the group was enriched through overcoming so many obstacles.

Jeff Ferrando: We had to learn to deal with other opinions. While I was at our information table, I spoke a long time to one lady before I realized that when she thought of “concrete” she saw vertical sidewalks in her mind.

Hubenthal: The whole process was great. We learned to depend on each other, working twelve hour days, all semester, laughing, plastering, molding.

Ross Roberts: We worked miracles. We removed a 48 foot by 45 foot solid concrete slab that was 8 inches deep. The loading of the concrete into a dump truck was a gigantic job, but when one person gave up, another too the lead.

Susan Bardin: It was hectic, lots of hard physical work that was tough on my body. My father was a house builder. I’d watched him a lot and had always wanted to participate in something similar. I liked the entire process of working in concrete from welding rebar to covering the armature with Styrofoam to molding the plaster. We had to get used to being filthy…had to build up our physical strength.

Masters: If you want something badly enough, there are no limits to what you can do.

Roberts: Deborah was like a psychotic Mother Teresa, fronting with her own money when funding was delayed.

Masters: Students put themselves on the line too, and made things happen.