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People travelling across the country on the M8 in the last few months will have seen the latest motorway art project, David Mach's Big Heids, situated at the Eurocentral site at Mossend. Big Heids is Scotland's first permanent display of David Mach's work and forms a striking landmark.
The sculpture was designed to reflect the rich history of North Lanarkshire's industrial past while looking forward to the future.
David Mach selected three faces from people he came across in local streets. Having chosen three faces with strong character, he worked with photographs to create larger than life clay models inspired by their features. These models were impressive works of art, in their own right, but marked just the beginning of the project.
Templates were taken from each of the modelled heads, enlarging them to the scale of the finished sculptures in polystyrene covered with a coating of plaster.
Moulds made up of eight parts were built for each head, which could be taken apart and put back together again using nuts and bolts. These moulds were then used to create the finished sculptures.
At the Motherwell Bridge workshops, cross-sectioned pieces of steel slid parallel to each other into the moulds were used to make the finished heads using a unique and innovative approach.
Each piece of steel was securely welded to the piece next to it to make a structure that is mechanically sound as well as having artistic integrity.
No one knew what the impact of the work would be once the moulds were removed. It was dramatic, the rusty steel and welded spatter giving each of the heads a quality of grittiness. The filling in of some of the larger tubes to give it a more solid finish was the only fine-tuning required.
The final stage involved grit blasting to remove rust and clean up the welds, followed by a coating of primer paint and heavy duty red paint. The finished effect makes the heads appear more attractive and is very durable.
The 20 foot high containers which the heads are mounted on form a visual link with the nearby rail container terminal. Ordinary containers would not be strong enough to hold the weight of the heads, so Motherwell Bridge engineers welded on strengthening lengths of steel. Substantial foundations were also constructed on the site at Eurocentral to support the weight of the sculptures.
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