By: Stephanie Saunders
Andrew Scott, a foundations and sculpture professor at SCAD, has just finished a project that took him six years to complete. The project is a gavel, measuring 30 feet x 15 feet x 12 feet, made out of stainless steel and concrete, located in the south pool of the Ohio Supreme Court.
Scott first found out about the opportunity through a national request for qualifications mailed to him through the Ohio Arts Council Registry of Artists. He was then selected as one of about 12 artists asked to develop a proposal for the north and south pools of the building.
To come up with ideas for his projects, Scott reviews the criteria set by the client and then turns that into a list of words and symbols that coordinate with the criteria. In this case, the theme was the law, so he came up with a list of everything related to law. Scott says, “The idea of a gavel came up really early. This led to some research to see if anyone else had done a similar sculpture. I really looked at the work of Claus Oldenburg and Koosjie Von Bruggen. I couldn’t believe that they hadn’t done one.”
Although the proposal he sent in called for two 60-foot gavels to be set up, one in each pool, Scott scaled it back to the final size of 30 feet. Although the committee was excited about such a large gavel, they decided that just one was enough, so they split the commission between Scott and another artist, Malcolm Cochran, who is creating a sculpture of marble letters that spell out words related to the law. Scott reveals, “One of my early ideas was to do a gavel in one pool and a kinetic scale in the other. If I had done that, I think I would have stood a good chance of walking off with the whole thing. Oh well.”
Even with one large-scale sculpture, Scott worked extremely hard to see it through. This is one of his first projects where he didn’t do any of the actual construction. The team that built the gavel consisted of a fabricator and polisher, a concrete fabricator working on the bases for the sculpture, a rigging company to install it and an engineer.
When asked how he could work on the project and keep up with his SCAD duties, he replied, “Not easy. A lot of time on the phone and on my computer, a lot of weekend trips into Ohio, and too many sleepless nights.” However, he says, “I am constantly inspired by the work and creativity of my students, and many times I am working right alongside them on projects. It’s very challenging, but I think I have found a good balance.”
The gavel is part of a multi-million dollar renovation of the Supreme Court building that is a very important part of Ohio’s history. It’s taken six years to finish, but, as Scott says, “It is something that I am blessed to be a part of. It will be something that I can point to and share with my children in years to come.”
