Scrap Tanker Car Becomes Giant Steel Mantis

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Scrap Tanker Car Becomes Giant Steel Mantis

Bill Secunda’s sculpture Mantis Dreaming was inspired by The Verve’s song Catching The Butterfly. Of it, he writes:

I imagined a praying mantis might have that dream, his opposite, the butterfly, beautiful, delicate, and always out of reach. He is so infatuated with it, when the butterfly lands on him he stands frozen. His instincts clash with his fascination, all he can do is hope it doesn’t fly away.

The work stands twenty feet tall, weighs 1.5 tons, and was welded together from scrap steel (most of which came from a junked rail tanker) over the course of about six months. It’s now listed as a “Top 10” entry in the ongoing ArtPrize 2011 contest in Grand Rapids, MI.

8 thoughts on “Scrap Tanker Car Becomes Giant Steel Mantis

  1. James B says:

    Somebody has a plasma cutter.  Nice.

  2. Jason White says:

    now that is somthing i would love in my yard…..   nice!

  3. Robert Cruickshank says:

    Awesome. Amon Tobin’s track Four Ton Mantis would also be appropriate, even if it’s only 1.5 tons.
     

  4. Sammy Mull says:

    I kinda like the basic idea of scrapping old cars if provided “heavy/generous” incentives to purchase a new one. It could be offered to dealerships also so they could get rid of the crap on most of their lots.

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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