East Meets West
by Nava Thompson
Title
East Meets West
Artist
Nava Thompson
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
A photo taken by Nava Thompson in Tulsa, Oklahoma of the Route 66 'East Meets West' sculpture......................................The line dividing �east� from �west� may seem more philosophical than geographical. But that didn�t stop Tulsa, Oklahoma, from spending six years and $1.2 million to claim it. .............................The exact spot is now marked by an impressive, large bronze sculpture titled East Meets West, unveiled November 9, 2012. According to one of several plaques that surround the statue, it stands at �the point where the landscape begins to change� and therefore marks the division between the claustrophobic green East and the wide-open brown West..................Aside from its cartographic significance, the statue is packed with Route 66 symbolism. It depicts �a fictitious but probable encounter� in 1927 between a Model-T (the East) and a Tulsa oil field wagon pulled by two terrified horses (the West)...................East Meets West.The car carries the family of Cyrus Avery, �The Father of the Mother Road,� who in the 1920s successfully lobbied Congress to make Route 66 a national highway, and who also convinced the Route 66 Commission to run the road through Oklahoma. His persuasion was greatly aided by Tulsa�s 11th Street Bridge, the first concrete bridge west of the Mississippi (an important consideration for a national highway), which crosses the Arkansas River just beyond the sculpture.
The artwork, which spans 40 feet and weighs ten tons, took six years for Robert Summers to bolt and weld together out of almost 1,000 separate pieces of bronze. Its detail is obsessively impressive, from the embossed lettering on the car�s Firestone tires to the decorative perforations on Avery�s leather dress shoes. Summers even included a grasshopper, smashed against the car�s radiator, dyed green. For all of the sculpture�s complexity, Summers has said he had the most trouble rendering the Avery�s pet cat, which claws the air in terror from the car�s back seat.
Uploaded
March 19th, 2014
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Comments (2)
Doug Kreuger
Nava, The waving flags in this artwork add a sense of energy to this humorous historical statement. This image reminds me of an idea I have for an artwork I will call "Connecting To The Past" —depicting a child on a cell phone, talking to their great-grandparents who are using an old rotary-dial phone.. L&F
Nava Thompson replied:
Thank you Doug---I will be looking forward to any new work you have. Love the idea---!!
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