vancouver BC Stanley Park
Girl in a Wetsuit is a life-size 1972 bronze sculpture by Elek Imredy of a A life size bronze statue of a woman in a wetsuit, with flippers on her feet and her mask pushed up on her forehead, sits on a large intertidal boulder just offshore of Stanley Park. In September of 1968, Douglas Brown, a Vancouver lawyer, talked to sculptor Elek Imredy about his desire to commission a sculpture inspired by the famous Copenhagen mermaid, which could be sited on the great granite boulder just off the northern shore of Stanley Park. Imredy proposed a life-size bronze sculpture of a scuba diver. On Brown's initiative, the Vancouver Harbour Improvement Society was formed with the intention of financing and facilitating a unique landmark for both Vancouverites and visitors to the city. They raised the money to produce the sculpture privately and Imredy was commissioned to craft the proposed work. The Vancouver Park Board gave permission to the society to place the sculpture on the rock. Because the boulder was often covered at high tide, a precast concrete ring was created and the rock was lifted by a floating crane and set on the ring about 100 feet from its original location. Imredy first took a mold of the top surface of the rock. In his studio, he made a replica of the rock and modeled the figure in clay. Imredy asked his young friend Debra Harrington to model, however the sculpture is not recognizably her image. "When I couldn't get the model to hold her hand the way I wanted I held my left hand in front of a mirror, showing its opposite, and I modeled right one. Of course, I made it a bit nicer, with longer fingers." A plaster of paris mold was made from the clay figure and the sculpture was cast in fibreglass. This fibreglass figure was flown to Rome where it was cast in bronze at Giovanni and Angelo Nicci's foundry. On June 9th, 1972, the sculpture was set in place by an electric crane reaching out from shore to the rock 80 feet away and fastened to the stone.
Size: 5000px × 3333px
Location: Stanley Park
Photo credit: © Mette Holm / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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