Spirit of the Bull: Reliant Stadium - Houston, Texas

Valley Bronze believes our clients are our best references. In this spirit, here are a few excerpts from a book published by sculptor Walter Matia and the Houston Texan NFL franchise about the bronze bull project our company completed for Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas. ©2003 Houston Texans

The work at the foundry in Joseph, Oregon was divided into a series of tasks. The Spirit of the Bull monument was created using the lost wax -- or cire perdue -- process of hollow metal casting. It's a process that invovles creating a series of molds and castings to transform the original and, in most cases ephemeral, original model into a finished bronze.

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The people working in the metal shop of the foundry are the second to last unit of Team Valley Bronze. Their success was really determined by the skills of the mold makers, wax pourers and chasers, and shell dippers and metal pourers -- a whole team that is Super Bowl caliber.

It's my belief that the reason these folks are so good at what they do lies in the town of Joseph, Oregon itself. It's a beautiful place. The people who live and work there are hunters, fisherman and hikers. In short, they tend to be very observant. They have seen bulls up close, handled them, worked around them. When faced with sixty pieces of metal and told to weld that pile back into Walter's bull, they instinctively knew where to begin.

Turning over your work to another set of artisans is one step of the sculptor's journey that some artists never really get comfortable with. Some people never find a good enough foundry to warrant comfort.

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So how do you hang a 2,700-pound bull on the side of a cement column?

Easily, as it turns out. To engineers, 2,700 pounds does not weigh that much. The foundry engineers suggested a pair of two-inch-thick stainless steel pins set eight inches off center and fixed 18 inches into the concrete column.

Engineering and installing the two pins inside the bronze bulls proved to be quite a bit more interesting ... and expensive.

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Of the project's many engineering problems, maintaining the proper orientation of the sculptures as they were lifted and fitted over the receiving steel pegs, was preeminent. The problem the team foresaw was that the pieces could not be forced on to the support pegs; they had to slip into the twin parallel supports. There was less than 1/8th of an inch of slack over a 20-inch distance. Any cocking of the angle of entry would bind the connection. We explored solutions using straps, but found them wanting as they would damage the patina in shipping and lifting. The foundry solved the problem by determining the exact balance points of the pieces at the designated orientation to the columns and set eyehooks in place. Sounds easy, but if the crane operator's awe was any indication, their achievement was extraordinary.