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solving for x

searching for a statue stand-in

Ben Bernard is a computer specialist in architecture, a job he has loved and nurtured for the past 12 years. His role is to help faculty and students teach and learn better. Over the years, he’s been asked for all kinds of favors, so perhaps he was more prepared than some for a call last spring asking him to agree to be a body double for a statue. Can’t tell you who or why or even when, but will you pose? Yes, happy to help in any way I can, he says.

He would soon learn that the project involved creating a statue of Professor A. Glenn Hill, for whom NDSU’s new STEM building was to be renamed. Professor Hill, a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics from 1927 to 1967, had a profound impact on generations of scientists and engineers who graduated from NDSU. The dedication event where the statue was to be dramatically unveiled was six short months away. No time to dilly dally.

Finding a company that does this sort of work proved to be easy enough. But creating the model for a sculptor can be a long process when the subject of the statue is not available. The sculptor could have viewed as many photographs of Professor Hill as possible and started from scratch. The short cut was to find someone who looked a bit like the professor who could pose for a full-body scan. The person assigned to find someone — though thinking this was a needle-in-a-haystack assignment — decided to look at employee photos on the NDSU website, alphabetically by department. Luckily, Bernard is in architecture.

Bernard traveled to the studio, got into a suit a bit like Professor Hill’s, and struck a few poses. A favorite was selected. He then had to hold very still for about two minutes as the scan was made with a surprisingly small handheld device. From the scans, a laser cut a large block of blue foam to match, as the basis for the sculptor to add a little here and subtract a little there, and turn Ben Bernard into Glenn Hill.

Professor Hill wrote three textbooks, which he holds in the bronze version. Bernard, who admits he has a little theater in his background, not only channeled one of his mathematics professors from his undergraduate days, he also brought his own college math textbooks as props. A bit of getting into character. The studio guys remarked that he projected the Midwestern stoic in a way that just worked. “In my undergraduate days I had a math professor with some of the characteristics Dr. Hill may have had,” Bernard says. “Faculty have a certain deliberateness to them.”

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