Colonial Williamsburg Map

Williamsburg, VA - 1990

 I was commissioned to create a bronze map replicating all the buildings in the town in three dimensions. Restoring the town of Williamsburg Virginia was originally a Rockefeller project. It was a relatively intact colonial town of about 500 buildings. On my first visit, I’ll never forget entering a bar frequented by the employees of the town who were all dressed in Colonial garb. Surreal, not unlike the interplanetary bar scene in Star Wars. When I headed back to my studio in Boston to start work on the project, the Rockefeller group shipped me an earlier map of Williamsburg. It was 12 feet by 12 feet and completely hand crafted in wood and plaster. The little building replicas were incredibly detailed with windows, chimneys, columns and dormers. They were also painted with double 0  brush. The map weighed almost a ton. 

When I was finished I called them about shipping their map back and they told me to throw it out. This seemed like a crime given all the human hours that were expended in crafting the work, so I took my sawzall, a crude demolition  tool and chopped out the choicest sections of the work which had the densest and most detailed clusters of buildings. The sections of the map that I carved out were covered with a thick layer of plaster dust from cutting, which I worked on removing for a whole day and got nowhere. So I wrapped them up and put them on a high shelf in my studio, where they still sit today decades later.