HOT SPRINGS -- After a favorable first attempt, members of National Park College's Makerspace program recently returned to the studio of local artist Longhua Xu to offer continued high-tech assistance in creation of "The Visitor," a sculpture that will eventually be placed downtown.
The piece, which depicts a Native American woman on horseback, will be placed near the intersection of Malvern Avenue and Bridge Street when completed.
The base will be 8 feet tall and the sculpture itself will be 12 feet tall, for a total of 20 feet in height, Xu said. "You can see it at least 100 feet away."
It has been a six-year journey since its original inception in 2016. National Park College previously provided a 3D scan of a smaller version of the figure to create a casting mold, but the detail wasn't high enough, according to the artist.
"Longhua was trying to figure out a solution to cast this large statue without having to rely on traditional molds and he has a long working relationship with my boss, Joel Rush," Michael Karr, Makerspace program coordinator at National Park College, said.
Xu was looking to utilize a three-dimensional scanning method and Rush happened to have the equipment available at National Park College Makerspace, he said.
According to National Park College's website, Makerspace is a "publicly accessible workshop, equipped with tools, equipment, and resources for a wide variety of projects."
The equipment from Makerspace is being used to render a 3D scan of the piece. The data can then be used to make a mold for the sculpture that is several times larger than the original.
"I've known Longhua for years, and we've worked on other things before. So it was nice that we could help them out with it. We were really happy that the college could be helpful," Rush said.
The first attempt at a smaller version yielded favorable results, so Xu built a model four times larger and invited the team to return for an additional scan.
The reason Xu made a larger model for the second scan is because the smaller version "doesn't capture all the details," he said, noting when "you make it bigger you will face questions, more problems."
In the earlier version, Xu depicted a Native American woman riding on a horse with a modern saddle, holding onto reins. In the final version, Xu took out these items, saying he wants it "to feel more like a myth."
In order to capture the image in 3D, Karr placed dots across the sculpture before scanning the artwork.
"It helps the scanner know in relation to what's already scanned. They also help me in post-processing, because I will end up with several different versions of the scanned area and I'll have to stitch it all together and this will give me a good reference to align everything," he said.
"I had used this previously for one of the bath houses downtown, so I wasn't a stranger to the technique," Karr said. "We committed to it and got excellent results in the first round. This time it will be a little challenging because it's a lot larger sculpt, but we learned a lot from that."
The sculpture is "a committee project," Xu said. "So we love to see all the people involved in like National Park. It is not only benefit for me, but also benefit them."
Xu said the results from the scan will be sent out to two or three companies "to just get a bid back." From there a mold will be made and then formed into the final bronze statue. He hopes the entire project will be complete within this decade.
"My wife [Shunying Chen] passed away a couple years ago. She is the one who really support this project," Xu said. "We were living here for years. We wanted to do something to honor the city who opened arms for us. And the people love us, love our work, you know. We raised two kids here, doctors. We will do something for the city. Kind of like a gift you know, so we design this."
The sculpture was originally going to be of Hernando de Soto, Xu said, but they had some problems with that.
"So then we say well, 'the [Native American] people originally living here, we can honor them.' Originally it was a man. The reason switched female was because in the year before last year my wife passed away. Suddenly I feel my life is miserable. She is really inspiration, she helped me, she is very intelligent. So I think we need to honor my wife, so we switch to female because female [Native American] really it's very good for the society," he said.