Illinois town hopes its "Eternal Indian" just lasts till spring.

Illinois town hopes its "Eternal Indian" just lasts till spring.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hometown-black-hawk-20131020,0,2754841.story#axzz2iSy58RuC

The slightly mournful face of what some might consider Illinois' Statue of Liberty has weathered its 102 years remarkably well. It's a focal point of the Eternal Indian, a 50-foot statue that towers over the Rock River about 100 miles west of Chicago.
But the body is so deteriorated that a flip of the finger can loosen chunks of its concrete surface. Deep cracks and gaping pock marks are spread throughout the statue.


Now, as winter looms, Frank and Charron Rausa have less concern about whether the beloved figure is eternal.

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I don't know much about restoring this type of thing, but would it be possible to strap cables to it? It looks like it will fall over!

How interesting, Toni, and how wonderful that people are making the effort to save it. Look at the scale of the thing, compared to the people standing near it!

You might be interested in a children's book called Leonardo's Horse, by Jean Fritz and Hudson Talbot (he did the splendid illustrations), about a design that Da Vinci left unmade when he died of a monumental statue of a bronze horse. The statue was finally created in recent times by Charlie Dent, a man who vowed to make the statue to Leonardo's original specifications and present it to the people of Italy. The format of the book is very unusual; the actual book has a curved top to suggest a dome and accommodate the pictures. As you can see, I'm fascinated by stories about statues, because they often bring many stories together: the creative life of the sculptor, perhaps the history of the subject if it's a person, and the technology used to make the statue (whether of stone or metal).

Thanks for pointing this out to us! I too wonder whether cables might be the answer. Apparently the body is hollow, so that must present special problems of stability.