#105, Tuskegee Airman revisit

Joe Gomer (Tuskegee airman) by Sutton Betti, bronze, life size, Ellsworth Community College, Iowa Falls, IA

Last week, while I was in Wayne, Nebraska doing the install for Remembering at Wayne County Veterans Memorial, I decided to drive to Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls, Iowa to see my bronze statue of the Tuskegee Airman Joe Gomer. The leaves were changing and being that I didn't have very good pictures of my first WW2 statue and that I was only about 3 hours away at the time, I thought why not. The sculpture was commissioned in 2012 and is the first war statue that I made in what seems to be a steady flow of work in this field (knock on wood), and worthy of a visit. It was a cold and frosty morning, but well worth the drive. Iowa Falls IA, like Wayne, NE, is a very small town of about 5,000 people and both towns also have a beautiful college campus. ...Interesting story, while snapping these pictures early Saturday morning a young man walks up to me and we start chatting about the bronze sculpture. He told me many of the community college students will walk by and take selfies and put their pictures on Ellsworth facebook page. After a few minutes I told him that it's time for me to make the long drive back to Colorado and he then tells me how much he misses it there. "Where from, I ask?" Loveland, CO, he tells me! ...Small world.

#40 Joe Gomer patina

Joe Gomer (Tuskegee Airman) by Sutton Betti, 2013, bronze- life size dimensions

Joe Gomer (Tuskegee Airman) by Sutton Betti, 2013, Bronze- life size dimensions

Spent the morning at Art Castings working with the patineurs Nate Ford and Chad Quam on the life size bronze sculpture of Joe Gomer, a Tuskegee airman. Although initially I wasn't entirely sure how the multi-color patina was going to look, I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out so well. Normally I like to do a brown or black patina, and a lot of my work looks best this way (at least I think so), but I've been happy lately seeing my sculptures with the transparent ferric nitrate over liver of sulfur. Joe Gomer will be installed in Iowa Falls, IA in the hometown of mr. Gomer. He is one of the last few surviving Tuskegee airmen, now in his 90's.