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Client: Grounds for Sculpture
Location: Hamilton, NJ, United States
Completion date: 2024
Project Team
Artist
Sandy Williams
Sandy Williams Studio
Director of Collections & Exhibitions
Faith McClellan
Grounds for Sculpture
Project Manager
Daniel Gwynn
Johnson Atelier Digital
Overview
Memorial Stairs showcase Sandy’s Wax Monuments, a series of sculptures that depict famous monuments as miniature wax candles. Americans’ views of figures on pedestals occupying public space is troubled. Monuments are concrete objects that bring history to life, often considered to be untouchable or permanent. Chiseled into stone, or mixed into molten bronze is the intent to shape public perception and collective memory. What becomes contentious is whose collective memory is prioritized and whose stories are forgotten.
Goals
By creating small figures that can be melted down, Williams gives the public agency to engage with the monuments and meditate on the ideals they represent. Melting the figures results in a symbolic gesture that Williams sees as not an erasure of history, but an opportunity for transformation.
Process
Williams takes 3D scans of public monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty, and shrinks them down into wax forms that are small enough to be held.
Additional Information
Slow Motion will be on display at Grounds for Sculpture till September 1, 2025.