Artist's equestrian sculpture to be unveiled at Fort Wood

Last October, I wrote about local sculptor James Hall III, who has created many pieces in and around Springfield, including several bronzes at Close Memorial Park, Drury and OTC.

At the time, the Glendale and Missouri State graduate was working on a 13-foot-tall bronze equestrian piece titled “Marechaussee” for the Memorial Grove at Fort Leonard Wood. Hall said he planned to have the piece in place by September 2016.

Hall’s plans have indeed worked out, and this Monday, “Marechaussee” will be dedicated as a kickoff to Regimental Week at the Fort, which will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the military police corps.

Marechaussee, who is a Revolutionary War-era mounted soldier, started his life long before I wrote about him a year ago. Hall has been working on the piece for some four years.

Starting with blocks of insulation foam attached to a metal armature, Hall carved the horse and rider from the foam, then did detail work on the pair with a mixture of concrete and Elmer’s glue, he said.

That was just the beginning, however. After many sleepless nights for Hall, worrying about how to accomplish what would come next, a friend of his “forklifted the entire horse and rider and took it to Gordon’s Fabrication near Willard,” he said. The company does a lot of work for Bass Pro, Hall added, and they cut the sculpture into “probably 50 pieces,” then encased it in a rigid fiberglass mold.

Next, the molds were filled with wax, and all that was taken to a foundry in Lawrence, Kansas.

“They dipped each piece of wax into a slurry, almost like breading okra,” Hall said, harking back to his Memphis roots to find an apt description of the process.

Next, the foundry cast the pieces in bronze about 3/16” thick, welded them together and added a patina to finish the 3,000-pound piece.

Now the sculpture was complete, but Hall’s next headache was moving Marechaussee along the interstate to its final home. It turned out to be a lot easier than he had imagined.

“I was sort of giggling at how easy it was to move,” Hall said. He had heard of a heavy hauling company in Olathe, and they picked up the sculpture, checked the height of all the bridges along the way and off they went with Hall following in a second vehicle.

“It was so easy,’ Hall said. “The culmination of four years of nightmares was nothing.”

Now the work is in place, lifted from the truck by crane, to its permanent home at Fort Leonard Wood. It will be officially dedicated Monday morning as part of Memorial Grove’s annual remembrance of military police who have died over the past year.

“You know, it's funny what it takes to make one of these monumental size pieces,” Hall said. “I may get to sign my name to it, but it's the efforts of about 30-40 people from different companies that bring it all together.”

WANT TO GO?

WHAT:  Dedication of James Hall’s equestrian sculpture, “Marechaussee”

WHERE: Military Police Regimental Association Memorial Grove (MPRA) at Fort Leonard Wood, MO

WHEN:  9:45 a.m. Monday

HOW MUCH: Free. Attendees must bring two official forms of identification, including a driver’s license, Social Security card or passport

MORE INFO: For more information on James Hall, go to www.jhcreative.org.  For more information on the Military Police Regimental Walkway and Grove, go to: www.mpraonline.org