Sculpting Auburn's JHS statues: 'You want people to feel that person'

Sculpting Auburn's JHS statues: 'You want people to feel that person'Sculpting Auburn's JHS statues: 'You want people to feel that person'

AUBURN, Ala. – Lou Cella recently spent a lot of time on eBay and YouTube but he wasn't searching for bargains, tutorials or entertainment.

Cella targeted pictures and videos of legendary Auburn football coaches Shug Jordan and Pat Dye to guide his creative process while he sculpted statues of Jordan, Dye and Cliff Hare.

The statues, unveiled Oct. 8 at Jordan-Hare Stadium, honor the men whose names adorn Auburn's football stadium and playing field.

"By the time I'm done, I feel like I know them intimately in my own way," Cella said. "Everything we're trying to do here is centered on capturing a personality. You want people to feel the person. That's where we're going with it."

The Dye, Jordan and Hare families provided preferred photos on which Cella based his creations, and Auburn shared its extensive archives, but Cella continued to dig for anything that would help him learn about his subjects, including a season recap video from the early 1980s.

"That was really valuable to me," Cella said. "Being able to see how Coach Dye's personality would communicate."Artist Lou Cella with his sculpture of Shug Jordan
On eBay, Cella found pictures of Coach Jordan.

"You never know what some fan is getting rid of," he said. "Sometimes they have photos that were taken by a newspaper, stuck in a file, never used then they sell their stuff later. All of a sudden, some ideal angle show up, some article of clothing that reveals something I haven't seen before.

"This is not a painting, this is not one view. I have to know what the back of the head looks like, the folds around the arm pit, wherever your eyeball may place, what the soles of the shoes might look like if he is walking and one foot is up.

"The farther back you go the more scarce these things become. The year he retired from coaching there was a preserved video of him on YouTube out there discussing his career and his future. I was able to get a lot out of that."

Cella studies his subjects from head to toe, including Jordan's old-school coaching shoes.

"Those were classic," said Cella, who said they reminded him of his high school coach's footwear. "People are selling them and they post really great photos and I can reference that and get every detail as close as possible."

For Cliff Hare, a member of Auburn's first football team in 1892, images were scarce, with only a handful to use.

"That ain't much," said Cella, who created a composite from existing pictures, then studied fashion from the early 1900s to further facilitate Hare's sculpture. "I read up on him. The diversity in what he accomplished was very interesting to me."

One of Dye's SEC championship rings, Jordan's hat ("As an artist, I'd prefer not to have a beach hat on him because the man had a magnificent head of very interesting, wavy hair that would have been really fun to sculpt"), the famous cigar box that Hare and Georgia's stadium namesake, Dr. Steadman Sanford, used to collect and later divide ticket revenue from the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry. Cella tried to capture it all.

"You'll see him holding it under his arm as he's looking on," Cella said. "That's the fun thing that really set that one apart.

"People are going to look at it and say, 'What's that?' And it stirs conversation, and that's what you like to see come from any work of art. You want people to talk about it and have an interest in it."'What's that?' Lou Cella holds a cigar box like the one depicted in his statue of Cliff Hare
An artist for Timeless Creations, part of the Chicago-based Fine Art Studio of Rotblatt Amrany, Cella specializes in sports statues, including one of former Auburn baseball star Frank Thomas for the Chicago White Sox.

While sculpting in clay, Cella shared pictures of his progress with his subject's families and Auburn administrators, seeking feedback while changes, such as the clapping motion of Coach Dye's hands, were still possible.

"You don't completely trust your own perception. That's why those outside eyes are so important," he said. "There's not much changing things once they're out there in bronze. When it's in clay, you can make those changes."

The 8-foot statues weigh between 900 and 1,000 pounds and take between two and three months to create.

After they're bronzed at a foundry, they're delivered and assembled onsite before the unveiling, an anxious moment for an artist.

"It's a neat feeling to see that happen," Cella said. "It's exciting. It's a little bit nervous because this is the first time everybody else is going to see it. You certainly are proud of it. You take full possession of it. It's really personal.

"You're putting your work in the hands of somebody else at that point and it's tough because all this time, it's been just mine.

"When that veil comes off and that family gathers around it and former players are coming up to it, and then the fans come in and start taking pictures, there's that whole feeling of, 'It's not mine anymore.'

"Really, it never was. It was commissioned by Auburn, but that's how I work. It's mine until I let it go."Statues of Pat Dye and Cliff Hare share Lou Cella's studio with other projects 
HOW BRONZE STATUES ARE MADE

After sculpting the image, a rubber mold is shipped to an artist foundry where the bronze work is done. Plaster is put on quarter-inch thick rubber to create a hard shell so the rubber has a nest to sit in to retain its shape. At the foundry, workers pour in and brush molten wax to coat the inside, then peel off the rubber mold. They will then have sections of a wax statue. Another mold on top of the wax is called a slurry: a heat-resistant ceramic composite containing pre-established outlets. Once it hardens, it's placed in a kiln or blast furnace. The mold is unaffected by heat but the wax inside melts and runs out of the outlets, leaving a hollow, wax-free mold. Bronze is then poured into the outlets. When it cools, the slurry is chipped off, and several pieces or sections remain.
These are welded together, and tools are used to render the seams invisible to the viewer. "Any bronze sculpture you see, any public piece, that's how it was done, in sections," Cella says.
After the bronze statue is completed and cleaned, a patina is applied to give the statue its color. An acid chemical heats up the bronze surface, which fuses with the patina to give the statue a dark brown tone
Applied uniformly, workers use pads to brush off the dark color at high points while it remains in low areas. This brings out details so the statue can be clearly seen. A lacquer seal is then applied to preserve the bronze, and a wax coating is applied to preserve the lacquer.
Twice a year, customers are encouraged to wash the statues with water and re-apply wax, similar to what one would do with a car or a floor. 'If you don't do that, in time it will turn green through natural oxidation" says Cella. "If you keep waxing a statue, it will maintain its original look.
"Once that's on, we load them onto a truck and drive to Auburn, Alabama."

Studio founder Omri Amrany prepares the Auburn statues prior to their unveiling

Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jeff_shearer