SCULPTURE RESURFACES AFTER CARRIED BY TORNADO

ART
SCULPTURE RESURFACES
AFTER CARRIED BY TORNADO
What is left of “Fast” sits in Craig Wedderspoon’s studio on the University of Alabama campus. Much of the sculpture was lost when it traveled over a
mile away, swept up in the April 27 tornado.
An aptly titled sculpture by a UA art professor
is found after being blown away April 27
BY MEREDITH CUMMINGS
PHOTOS BY SCOTT BOWMAN
When University of Alabama art professor Craig
Wedderspoon named his sculpture “Fast,” he
could not envision how fast it would go.
When the aluminum sculpture, which weighs
hundreds of pounds, was not being shown around the country,
Wedderspoon kept it in Steve Miller’s pecan orchard. The
work was not meant to be an outside piece — there is, after
all, no way to safely bolt it down — but keeping it outside at
a friend’s house seemed a safe bet.
Until April 27.
That’s when “Fast,” so named because of the whirlwind of
vortices throughout the sculpture, went about 150 miles per
hour, its welded-together aluminum squares taking flight
over the city.
The EF-4 tornado blew the work more than a mile away,
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but it — most of it, anyway — came back to Wedderspoon,
head of the sculpture program at the University of Alabama.
Wedderspoon’s mentor, artist Lester Van Winkle, once said
the piece had velocity, and mentioned that “it looked fast.”
The name stuck.
“There’s lots of irony to this piece,” Wedderspoon says,
looking at what is left of it in his studio on campus. He has
about three-quarters of the piece, which he says is basically
built like a “big whiffle ball.” The rest is still missing.
Just after the tornado, Wedderspoon was worried about
Miller, whose home was destroyed, and went to see if he was
all right. The last thing on his mind was the sculpture.
“But the first thing he said to me was that my piece was
gone,” Wedderspoon said. “I was just happy for him to
be alive.”
Wedderspoon finds it emotional to talk about events surrounding
the disappearance of “Fast.” One of his sculpting
students, Morgan Sigler, died in the tornado that day, and he
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ART
Wedderspoon talks about “Fast” in his studio. Jagged edges of the piece
where the wind ripped it apart are visible.
“Fast” is made from hundreds of
welded-together aluminum squares.
was en route to her funeral
in Bryant, Ala., when he
heard that his sculpture had
been spotted on campus.
Someone had dropped it
off with a note saying it had
been found a mile away.
Professor and students
are a tight-knit group.
“Sculpture, by its nature,
is a collaborative event,”
Wedderspoon says. “A lot
of people think of artists
locked up in a studio sitting
there doing their own thing.
But at any given time you have to have people help you hold
something, move something. The weight of things and the
machinery involved makes sculpture a communal process.
When Morgan died, it hit our kids hard.”
Wedderspoon initially considered fixing “Fast” and making
it an outside installation in memory of the storm victims, but
he realized that it would take more than 100 hours of work to
make it safe. Any outside sculpture has to be bolted down, safe
for children “and drunks,” as Wedderspoon says, to play on.
Wedderspoon says he is not sure what he will do with the
sculpture but may use pieces for other art projects.
Wedderspoon does not, however, have reservations about
what he might name his next piece, for fear of its living up to
its name.
“I’m not superstitious,” he says, “but I was pretty happy
with this piece. I consider this a critique by Mother Nature.
Maybe she decided that it needed to look a little different.”
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