But with luck, the bronze will still be around for everyone to look at and see what it was all about,” says Graf. “Who knows if Louisville will still be here a thousand years from now. Of course, you’ll have a hard time collecting on that guarantee. My personal guarantee is 3,000,” says Graf with a smile. “Some say a statue will last 500 years, and some say 1,000. As a sculptor in bronze, he gets to capture that one moment in time for a very long time. That frozen moment is the coolest part of Graf’s profession. Graf (far left) lends a foot for a liquid-bronze “pour” at Bright Foundry in Butchertown a bronze ingot (above, right) being melted. To get that one moment captured forever.” So you want to have a little action, to see what he’s doing. “The thing about sculpture,” explains Graf, “is you get just one frozen moment in time. “Jim and Pee Wee were great buddies,” says Owens. Owens says that Jim Morrissey, one of the ballclub’s owners when the Bats moved into their new park, commissioned Graf to undertake the statue of Reese, whose pivot was adapted from a rare 1953 Reese baseball card. And the Little Leaguers cock their arms and follow through, emulating Pee Wee’s throwing motion.” Every night you see people get their picture taken with the statue. “I just can’t tell you how many fans stop on their way into the ballpark to marvel at it. “It’s an awesome statue,” says Louisville Bats general manager Dale Owens. He looks uncannily alive, with his legs up, dodging the cleats of a sliding base runner as he smokes a strike to first. On the other hand, Graf installed a statue of Pee Wee Reese, the hometown Hall-of-Fame shortstop, on a pedestal in front of Louisville Slugger Field - not because Reese is held in god-like reverence, but to launch him into the air, turning the double play at second base. Graham Brown (like another hotelman Graf has depicted, Al Schneider) is placed at street level - with his shoes on the sidewalk - just the way he once greeted folks in front of his hotel. Tall, with wavy brown hair and glasses, he’s got the balance of a ballplayer, allowing him to stand up on one toe and twist himself into a pose that one of his subjects might assume. The sculptor has a string of statues dotting the Louisville landscape, and more on the way. Raymond Graf is one of the hottest artists around in what appears to be a new Bronze Age for the city. It’s the inclusion of Brown’s faithful friend that is the signature touch you get with a Raymond Graf sculpture: You find out more than how people look you find out who they are.Ībove: Jockey Pat Day at Churchill Downs, Baseball great Pee Wee Reese at Slugger Field, and Philanthropist James Graham Brown at the Brown Hotel. And it’s not Graf standing next to him, but Brown’s little dog Woozem. ”Well, it’s not actually Brown, but a remarkably accurate life-sized bronze statue of the famous Louisville hotelman in his characteristic 1940s felt hat and business suit. So we decided to include Woozem in the piece, and I think it worked out perfectly. “But I noticed that in so many of the photos he had that little dog with him. Graham Brown for me to work with, so re-creating his likeness was not hard,” says Graf. “The Brown Foundation had tons of photos of J. Raymond Graf and his natural-science menagerie in the sculptor’s Clifton home studio. He’ll be out there on the Fourth Street sidewalk with J. You can meet Louisville sculptor Raymond Graf any day of the week in front of the Brown Hotel.
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