Magnificent Moai

When George Etzel called to say he had a 14-foot tall Easter Island head sculpted for his Alburnett farm, I wondered what he'd been thinking. After all, these famous heads are located on an island thousands of miles away -- 2,200 miles west of Chile in the South Pacific Ocean -- and George's farm is out in the middle of nowhere in Linn County.

Why, I thought, would someone like George want to put such a unique piece of art out where very few people would see it?

George's simple answer: "I enjoy good art."

The more complicated answer (as explained in today's Ramblin' column in the Gazette) is that George has been longtime friends with Cedar Rapids sculptor Steve Piper. They were chatting one day, George expressed his desire for something large that would stand out in his field and Steve welcomed the challenge.

They decided on a moai -- the name for the Polynesian heads carved out of volcanic ash some 1,500 years ago. The 14-foot tall, 8-foot wide, 3,000-pound statue took Steve about a year and a half to complete. Made out of steel, it is naturally supposed to rust, which it did before he finished, although Steve did help it along by spraying it with a salt-water solution.

This spring, the moai was installed with the help of a crane on a large concrete platform some 400 feet from George's home. A gravel road passes to the east, a gravel road that would only be used by locals.

But, apparently, word has gotten out. "There are cars that go by," George says, "and they will stop."

People will climb out of the cars to take pictures from a distance. Some will walk closer, finally realizing that what they thought had been made from wood is actually a metal sculpture.

Some day George, 78, would like to add other sculptures to his yard. But he doubts if it'll be another moai.

"I'm hoping I don't get asked to do another one of this size," Steve says. "It was a lot of work. I had to build a scaffolding."

Work included drawings, molding a 6-inch tall model and then building a 3-foot tall mockup.

When Steve began work on the real thing, he used 1/2-inch steel rods to build a frame (at left) and then attached 12-gauge steel plates to it.

Some of those plates weigh more than 40 pounds each. The entire statue uses 500 square feet of steel at 4.3 pounds per square foot which calculates to 2,150-pounds of steel for the outer shell. And it's mounted on a huge steel plate that's attached to 11 yards of concrete poured and cured in the yard. 

With a retail price of at least $30,000, if you were to have Steve make one for you, I doubt that he'll see a big demand for making more moai.