By: Rani Shiao
Photo by: Kyle Zhu
After 48 long years, Gunn’s Timmy the Titan is finally getting a makeover.
Senior sculptor Tony Yin recently collaborated with alumni William Wang and Charlie Yang to finalize a small-scale bronze sculpture redesign of Timmy the Titan. The model is slated to be recast into a seven-foot statue that will be erected in the new second gymnasium, which is currently under construction.
Ceramics teacher Erik Bowman first proposed the idea of remaking Timmy the Titan to his Advanced Sculpture class after speaking with Principal Katya Villalobos about the need to take the Titan mascot back to its original Grecian roots. “This statue more accurately portrays the Titan myth,” Bowman said. “And as you can see from the statue, Tony built a model that wasn’t static; instead, there’s a sense of motion.”
According to Yin, he is happy with the way the statue turned out. “[Wang] and [Yang] started this project last year around March,” Yin said. “They made the basic model of the sculpture, while I did most of the detailing and refining. This year, I had to change many body proportions because they weren’t to scale, but we’re finally done, and it looks great.”
Bowman cites the model’s active pose as the most impressive feature of the sculpture. “Our goal was to create a dynamic, powerful icon to represent the admirable and heroic qualities of Gunn,” he said. “Unlike Timmy the Titan, [the new statue] is not an amalgamation of various legends. Timmy currently holds Zeus’ [bolt] and wears a spartan helmet, neither of which are appropriately attributed to the true Titan image.”
However, Yin is far from finished with the project. Bronze Works, a Santa Cruz foundry, is the factory that will produce the metal casting for the statue. Yin still needs to create an enlarged 3-D scan of the statue with the small model as a reference and still has to print out a full-sized styrofoam 3-D design.
After this is completed, Wang, Yang and Yin will reunite to perfect the final details of the sculpture before it is replicated in the kiln. “I believe the foundry is planning on casting the base, body, torso, arms, head, hourglass and staff in separate parts,” Yin said. “After completing this, they’ll use the patina, which is a process that will color the bronze through the use of various chemical sprays.”
The primary challenge of altering the sculpture into a statue for the gymnasium lies in the difficulty of finding sufficient funds. However, thanks to generous donations from the graduating classes of 2010, 2011 and 2012, the $30,000 goal necessary for the project has been met. “Our major hurdle was getting the funds, but now that we’re done with that, it’s just a matter of making the real statue,” Bowman said.
Though the official completion date of the sculpture is slated for the summer of 2013, Yin remains optimistic about the future plans for the statue. “We never thought about making the statue with bronze before due to the expenses, but the school supplied the money for us and encouraged us to pursue the project,” he said. “It was like an impossible daydream before, and now it’s finally coming true so I’m super excited.”
