Hockey Player - Newark, NJ
Posted by: Groundspeak Premium Member Metro2
N 40° 44.081 W 074° 10.194
18T E 570092 N 4509636
This 22 foot sculpture is located outside the Prudential Center...home to the New Jersey Devil's Hockey Team.
Waymark Code: WMEGHC
Location: New Jersey, United States
Date Posted: 05/27/2012
Published By:Groundspeak Regular Member Math Teacher
Views: 6

The official name of this sculpture seems to be kept a secret. Fans call it "The Iron Man". The 2009 work is by artist Jon Krawczyk. It is 22-foot tall and is made of stainless steel. The piece is set on a sandy surface for some reason and depicts a fully uniformed hockey player with his stick on the ice while his right leg is raised high behind him.

A video of the sculpture being installed can be seen at (visit link)

This website (visit link) adds:

"NEWARK -- Jon Krawczyk braved the heat today to witness his creation -- a nearly three-story stainless steel hockey player -- rise outside The Rock, the home of the New Jersey Devils.
"When you mess with the Devil, I guess you have to get in the kitchen," the sculptor said as temperatures reached well into the 90s in Newark. "It was cooking."

The sculpture, weighing 6,000 pounds, was put upright during often tense moments with the aid of ropes on the plaza outside the Prudential Center arena at Edison Place and Mulberry Street.

"It's like skating on the patio," he said shortly before 6 p.m., more than 9 hours after he delivered the towering man of steel.

The journey is one Krawczyk won't soon forget.

Last year, Krawczyk personally took the wheel of a truck to lead the expressionistic sculpture on a four-day cross-country trek from his Malibu, Calif., studio to his boyhood home in Boonton Township.

There, it waited a year under his mother's watchful eyes for today's perspiration-filled assembly, more than a month ahead of an "official" Sept. 29 unveiling at a Devils pre-season game.

The tall hockey player that some call "The Iron Man" is just the latest creation by the 39-year-old Krawczyk, whose handiwork has showed up at Texas A&M's art building and the Four Seasons Hotel in Hollywood, Fla.

To pull this one off, the longtime Devils fan actually got in touch with Michael Gilfillan, one of the owners of the Devils and a former classmate at Delbarton in Morristown, and successfully pitched the idea.

"I wanted to meld those things together -- to do a sports sculpture that could be appreciated as art," he said last year.

It took eight months to complete.

The road-trip was uneventful -- that is until Sunday night. It turns out someone stole the truck trailer's lights and brake lines during its layover, he said.

"I didn't realize that until last night," he said today. 'I figure it must have been a Ranger fan.'"
Name or use 'Unknown' if not known: The Iron Man ---- nickname

Figure Type: Human

Artist Name or use 'Unknown' if not known: Jon Krawczyk

Date created or placed or use 'Unknown' if not known: 2009

Materials used: stainless steel

Location: outside the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ

Visit Instructions:
Please upload at least one photo you have personally taken of the sculpture and tell us a little about your impressions of the piece. Additional photos are always appreciated.
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Metro2 visited Hockey Player  -  Newark, NJ 05/26/2012 Metro2 visited it