For two weeks last spring, local artists chiseled away at the concrete base of the renowned Iron Horse sculpture at its home tucked away in a field in Greene County. They loaded the structure onto a truck and carefully drove it back to Athens for a six-month-long restoration project.
On the morning of Nov. 22, the sculpture made its 25-mile trek back home following the completion of the project that was a labor of love for Amy Jones Abbe and Don Cope, the art conservator and metalsmith who spearheaded the restoration. The artists said the steel piece has seen some extensive wear and tear in its 70-year lifespan, including corrosion, scratches, vandalism and missing pieces.
“I think it was in much worse condition even than most people could see or recognize,” Abbe said. The 11-foot-tall sculpture was originally painted black, with rust forming quickly underneath. “If you allow iron oxidation, if you allow corrosion to start underneath a paint layer without addressing it, it just kind of continues and gets worse and worse,” said Abbe.
A new layer of paint and epoxy coating, similar to what is used on ships, was added to protect the piece from its outdoor environment. Because the sculpture stays outside and continues to be exposed to unrelenting weather, cleaning and periodic assessments to repair paint and scratches will be conducted. “As long as it’s maintained, cleaned occasionally and touched up, and if they can prevent graffiti, it will endure for a really long time. Much, much longer than the original,” Cope said.
Abbe added, “A sculpture, just like anything built, will deteriorate if it’s not built well and it’s not maintained. I think often the public has the impression that artwork or a sculpture can be made and put outside and you’re just done with it, but no one would ever do that with their house or their car. Just like anything in the built world, it has to be looked after.”
Abbe and Cope did extensive research on the history of the Iron Horse, originally sculpted by Abbott Pattison in 1954. They listened to interviews with Pattison describing the process of working mostly alone in the basement of the University of Georgia Fine Arts Building.
“Pattison describes building this in a room that was barely bigger than the horse. So he had no way of really getting to back away from it to see it,” Cope said. “It’s pretty clear to me that he changed what he was doing part way through, because the piece doesn’t resemble at all his sketches.”
The horse was originally displayed outside of Reed Hall on UGA’s campus, but students at the time were not fond of the sculpture’s abstract style. This led to vandalism and, ultimately, the work being set on fire, which caused pieces of the sculpture to go missing.
The sculpture was soon removed from campus and, after a few years, made its way to its current home on a farm owned by a then-UGA professor, where it was embedded in concrete in the ground. In its new form, the piece will be elevated on a concrete plinth, its original 1950s style.
In Cope’s restoration work, he used some modern welding techniques that would not have been available to Pattison to add some of those forgotten pieces, while still staying true to the artist’s intent. This required looking at the extremely limited number of old photographs to see what the horse originally looked like.
The sculpture was intended to be returned to the Iron Horse Plant Sciences Farm in Greene County in August, but rain and other factors led to an extended restoration process. Cope said that, even with the weather delays and excruciatingly hot summer days spent welding the artwork back to Pattison’s vision, it was all worth it. “Maybe the most important work I’ve ever done in my life,” he said.
“It’s been a lot of work, difficult and dirty work, but intensely satisfying because the restoration of the damage, to put the thing back together is really satisfying. Especially because it’s such an important part of the art fabric of this town and has a long and storied history,” Cope said. “I can’t think of many pieces of sculpture here or anywhere else that people feel so passionately about. Everyone, common people, not art appreciators, everyone.”
He hopes to see more respect paid to the artwork as it is put back on display. “It’s been part of the community for so long, people sort of accept the abuse that it is given, climbing on it, scratching it up. In reality, it’s a wonderful piece of fine art. You wouldn’t go to a museum and climb on a sculpture,” Cope said.
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