Why do these odd sculptures exist?
Although I haven’t done any in-depth research on why these exist, I have a pretty good guess. Of course, if you disagree, I am sure you will tell me in the comments below.
My theory is simple. When the highway system was being created, and roads like Route 66 allowed people to travel longer distances, small businesses wanted to get those passerby’s attention. And to do that, they figured they could break the monotony of driving by putting up some strange statue or sculpture to get people to stop and take a picture, and perhaps spend a little time at their place of business.
I am sure it worked in some cases, and I would love to know the overall success rate of them.
Where do they come from?
There are not a lot of places that make these. But Neal and I were out looking at a couple of them in Wisconsin, and found that those were manufactured just about an hour from where we were. So, we headed out to see FastKorp to see if they would let us poke around.
They were super nice and let us look around. Gave us a tour, and we even interviewed the manager. He showed us around the facilities and let us fly our drone to get some great pictures of the mold yard.
People think that the mold yard is a graveyard, but it is quite the opposite. It is where all of the molds LIVE so they can be used to make more of the same sculptures. They have molds for guitars, traffic cones, and so many more.
The process is just like anything that is created using molds, just on a pretty big scale! They have real sculptors create the original shape out of a special material. Then, they create the mold from that. Once the mold is made, they can create as many as the client wants.
We had no idea where our day was going to take us. We just kept on exploring and this is what happened. Here is the video we did from our day at FastKorp.They do a lot of one off sculptures, but they do have some molds that have been used for many sculptures. Check out their website and Facebook page for some of the really cool stuff they do.
