Why a Memphis artist is creating a 10-foot-tall David Bowie statue to put in Overton Park

Deep within a Memphis studio and gallery, beneath a large suspended globe of the moon, artist Mike McCarthy's lifelong rock 'n' roll obsessions, his extravagant creative impulses and his never-say-die resolve have coalesced as a striking physical presence: a 10-foot-tall statue of David Bowie, constructed (so far) out of steel, spray foam, housing insulation, poster board, pool noodles and papier-maché.

"It makes a wonderful 'Moonage Daydream' setting," said McCarthy, linking the hovering moon to the title of the third track on Bowie's landmark 1972 album, "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," which introduced the rock star-as-extraterrestrial persona that remained the British singer's most indelible alter ego until the time of his death, 44 years later, in 2016.

"Freak out in a moonage daydream, yeah," Bowie sang. McCarthy, 61, hopes to bring the freak-out to Memphis in a very public and — eventually — tourism-boosting way.

First, he is hosting a "Glam Rock Picnic" from noon-5 p.m. Sunday, June 30, at Off the Wall Arts at 360 Walnut St., where the statue is under construction.

Because of the heat, the event mostly will be indoors, making it "a picnic of the mind," McCarthy said. But it also will be a picnic of the hands: Attendees will be given hunks of clay to add to the oversized and under-construction Bowie, which ultimately — McCarthy hopes — will be cast in bronze and topped with four motorized and rotating Bowie faces: an "Aladdin Sane Weather Vane," representing four of the singer's stage personae, including Ziggy Stardust; Aladdin Sane, from the 1973 album of the same name; the piratically eye-patched Halloween Jack, introduced during the 1974 "Diamond Dogs" tour; and "Tokyo Pop," named for the iconic vinyl outfit that is the statue's chief inspiration.

Second and more important, McCarthy wants to place the statue in Overton Park, to commemorate the day — Feb. 26, 1973 — when Bowie brought his "screwed-up eyes and screwed-down hairdo" (to quote another "Ziggy Stardust" lyric) to the park's Memphis Academy of Art (later known as the Memphis College of Art), at the invitation of teacher and artist Dolph Smith.

"What is there about Memphis that affected Bowie?" McCarthy asked.

As the so-called birthplace of rock 'n' roll and the home of the blues and of Elvis (who shared his Jan. 8 birthday with Bowie), "Memphis was an inter-generational hub that influenced artists all over the world," he answered. "I think we still have that."

'Outrageously cool'

The statue, McCarthy said, is an argument against “Memphis negativity." It's "an outrageously cool thing to show off a moment of time and space — outer space — when Bowie was really at the zenith of his career. It's a moment in our history, even if it's just the time a space alien visited a school the day after he played a concert in Ellis Auditorium, wearing crazy Japanese clothes."

Of course, however influenced by Sun and Stax, Bowie wasn't a Memphis artist per se (but "what is glam rock but outer-space rockabilly?" McCarthy asked). Nevertheless, McCarthy thinks the statue could spur the launch of a Memphis music trail of sculptures honoring significant artists. "A statue is more profound than a historical marker," he said.

The city already boasts Downtown statues of Elvis, Little Milton, Bobby "Blue" Bland and W.C. Handy; McCarthy boosted the statue population himself in 2019, when he turned the Man in Black into a Man in Bronze, unveiling his lifesize sculpture of Johnny Cash outside Galloway United Methodist Church in Cooper-Young, where the future country superstar and his band, the "Tennessee Two," played their first public concert in 1954.

The statue was erected with the assistance of several organizations (including the Cooper-Young Business Association), and McCarthy hopes similar coalitions could help him dot the city with sculptures of Aretha Franklin, Howlin' Wolf, Rufus Thomas and others.

Such an effort would be in the future. For now, McCarthy and his small army of collaborators — "I call them 'The Spiders from Memphis,'" he said, inevitably — are working to turn the artist's quixotic vision into a startling reality.

A designer, artist, comic-book creator, music video director and filmmaker, McCarthy has devoted his remuneratively dubious not-quite-a-career to turning lifelong passions into public spectacles. He is best-known for his several decades worth of low-cost Memphis-made feature films, including "Teenage Tupelo," "The Sore Losers" and "Damselvis, Daughter of Helvis," to name a few.

Readymade cult films, these idiosyncratic movies expose McCarthy's obsessions with Elvis, Bowie, punk rock, horror comics, nudie pinups and other pop-culture tremors. His statues intersect with these themes in a way that is more easily accessible to mainstream audiences. Tourists take selfies with the Cash sculpture, and they certainly would pose with Bowie, too.

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Art relay

Like Bowie's music, which merged the basic rhythms of rock 'n' roll with intellectual and cerebral concepts borrowed from science fiction and the avant-garde, McCarthy's Bowie statue mixes simple, old-school techniques (papier-maché) with high-tech innovation (a 3D printer).

Long fascinated with Bowie's College of Art visit (McCarthy taught a Bowie-inspired film class at the college in 2008), McCarthy began plotting his Bowie sculpture in earnest many months ago.

The statue is based on the futuristic "Tokyo Pop" bodysuit created for the singer in 1973 for the "Aladdin Sane" tour by Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto (who died in 2020). The striped suit is notable for pantlegs that billow out like half-moons.

First, McCarthy sculpted a tabletop model of the statue in clay, with a four-faced, weather vane-style head, to suggest the shifting nature of Bowie's musical identities.

To expand this model into a larger-than-life sculpture required a strong foundation. Geordan Lugar, of the Lugar Bronze Foundry in Arlington, which cast the bronze Cash statue, and Memphis artist Yvonne Bobo, who specializes in large-scale metal sculptures, fashioned an A-shaped frame, metal arm rods and other pieces for the Bowie interior. In addition, Bobo engineered the weather vane mechanism. (Bobo owns Off the Wall Arts, and is letting McCarthy use space within her warehouse-like studio/gallery for his project. "We try to be an incubator for artists," she said, noting that Christopher Reyes' first "exploratorium" was at the gallery.)

Next, spray foam, housing insulation and swimming pool flotation toys (mostly, "noodles") were added to the simple steel skeleton, to make up the bulk of the Bowie anatomy. In a painstaking "wallpapering" process, these materials are wrapped in poster board and covered with papier-maché by such volunteer artists as Kasey Dees and Drew Whitmire. "The papier-maché layer becomes, in essence, the skin," said artist Jana Wilson, another active contributor, who often found herself perched atop a ladder, to reach the Bowie shoulders and chest.

Meanwhile, artist Terance Brown, used his 3D printer to "print" a copy of Bowie's actual face, as taken from a life mask of the singer that was cast by the makeup effects crew working on Bowie's 1976 film, "The Man Who Fell to Earth."

Enlarged by the 3D printer from 7 inches to 18 inches to match the monumental scale of the sculpture, the Bowie facial replica was employed by artist Colleen Couch as the basis for her own contributions to the statue: the four Bowie faces of the weather vane, each in handmade cotton-based paper, created on machines originally owned by her ex-father-in-law, Dolph Smith (now 90, and a possible "picnic" attendee, if his health allows).

"It's kind of like a relay," said Brown, 52, referring to the way the artists involved in the project handed off various duties to each other.

Sunday, "Glam Rock Picnic" attendees will become part of the relay, adding clay (600 pounds will be needed) to the big Golem of a Bowie, which McCarthy ultimately will sculpt into a semi-realistic if stylized likeness of the singer. Eventually, molds of the sculpture will be made, so that the likeness can be cast in bronze at the Foundry, and then transported to its permanent home, wherever that may be. (The Memphis College of Art closed in 2020; the building currently is being renovated to be the new home of the Metal Museum. Officials there said they could not comment at this time on the statue.)

McCarthy estimates the cost of the Bowie bronze will be close to $40,000. Patrons such as longtime investment expert Frank Smith and his wife, Linda, are contributing to the effort, but McCarthy will need to raise more funds and find more sponsors before the statue can be completed.

"It's classic Mike McCarthy," said Couch, 47. "He never does anything simple or by the book."

Nevertheless, McCarthy's collaborators said they won't be surprised if the Bowie statue finds an appropriate home.

“Mike has this sort of great vision, he finds the connections between everything,” said Bobo, 53, who noted that Bowie “happens to be the only famous person I’ve ever met and talked to.” (It was in 1990, when she visited the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. “There was David Bowie, in the medieval section. I was an art major. We talked about egg tempera.")

Couch suggested that working with McCarthy is enough to make one's head spin, even when one's face isn't attached to a motorized weather vane.

"It's just this renegade effort, to bring these wild ideas that are in his head into the world," she said. "It's fascinating to watch, but it's even more fascinating and fun to be a part of it."

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'Glam Rock Picnic'

A fundraiser and "sculpture party" to support artist Mike McCarthy's "Aladdin Sane Weather Vane" statue.

Noon-5 p.m. Sunday, June 30, Off the Wall Arts, 360 Walnut St.

Admission: $10. Kids 12 and under admitted free.

Each attendee will be provided with clay to add to the still-under-construction 10-foot David Bowie statue.

"Art market" with vendors selling rock 'n' roll merchandise; face-painting by The Prettiest Star; Eat at Eric's food truck; "Bowie bar" beverages; music by DJ Kitschy Kat, plus live music by Timothy Prudhomme and other artists.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: David Bowie statue in the works in Memphis: Go inside artist's studio