Former Washington man makes life-size sculpture of Edison
Alan Cottrill’s winning design shows Thomas Edison holding up an incandescent light bulb. A former Washington resident, Cottrill was selected to create a statue of Edison for the U.S. Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
Sculptor Alan Cottrill, a former Washington County resident, was picked to create a statue of Thomas Edison for the U.S. Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
Thomas Edison’s never looked better, according to Ohio Statuary Hall Commission. The commission announced last week that Alan Cottrill, a former Washington County resident and Zanesville, Ohio, native, will make a statue of Edison for the U.S. Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Cottrill and his wife moved to Washington 33 years ago and founded Four Star Pizza. The business quickly grew, and he and his wife chose to franchise. They had 500 stores within five years, but Four Star wasn’t Alan Cottrill’s last contribution to Washington County. Cottrill has 50 statues throughout Pennsylvania, including a life-size rendering of Robert Eberly in front of the library at California University of Pennsylvania and statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson at Washington & Jefferson College. Cottrill has 50 other statues around the United States.
At the age of 38, Cottrill was painting part time and studying a little with his art professor friends when he touched clay for the first time.
“The best analogy is that it’s very similar to the first time I kissed a girl,” he said as he described what he called a “magical moment.”
“(I thought), oh boy, I want to do this every chance I get. I was driven to sculpt. It was that simple,” he said.
Soon, he travelled to New York to buy every sculpting book he could find. He sculpted 20 heads and had his first show at California University of Pennsylvania within a year.
“Then, I moved to New York City and studied night and day at the Art Students League and at the National Academy of Design,” he said.
Cottrill’s interest in sculpting took him to Italy and France to look at some of the most well-known sculptures created. “A piece by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, ‘Ugolino and His Sons,’ I spent hours looking at that piece,” he said. “(And) Rodin’s ‘The Burghers of Calais.’ I just spent hours looking at them.”
What struck him, Cottrill said, were the statues’ sense of energy, dynamism and their sense of pathos.
“I’ve seen five kids be born, and it’s more like giving birth,” Cottrill said of what it’s like to sculpt. “It’s painful, elemental. Fun is going to a movie. Making art is painful.”
Cottrill originally created sculptures in a studio he built in his carriage house, but then he opened a studio on Main Street in Washington. His studio on Main Street was adjacent to that of his friend and art mentor, Ray Dunlevy, the head of the art department at Cal U.
“It was fantastic,” Cottrill said. “I learned a lot about art from Ray Dunlevy and also Paul Edwards.” Edwards was the head of the art department at W&J.
At the time, Cottrill said he and his friends were part of a Washington art club. Half a dozen artists met every Friday night and talked about everything from “theoretical physics to pretty girls,” he said. “It was very stimulating conversation. I miss that a lot. It was a rare opportunity and a rare time for very talented, well-read, hard-working artists that converged in Washington.”
Eventually Cottrill picked up and moved back to Zanesville, and in his hometown, he built a gallery that now has 400 bronze pieces. About 6,000 people visit throughout the year.
Most of the pieces Cottrill makes are commissioned, and he often has to take a subject and interpret that person. “I sculpt because of human emotion. I try in most every piece I do to imbue it with a complex set of emotions, because that’s the human state. There’s rarely just one emotion,” he said.
Cottrill focused that energy on making a life-size statue of Thomas Edison. Four-and-a-half years ago, he contacted the Ohio Statuary Hall Commission and asked them to tell him about a competition. “I started then, lusting after this commission,” he said. “I wanted it more than every commission I’ve ever gone after. The last time Ohio put a statue in the Capitol was 1880. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and worked my butt off to get it.”
To create the plans for the Edison piece, Cottrill visited Edison’s birthplace in Milan, Ohio, and was able to get dozens of photos of the famous inventor. One kept catching his eye, and it was a photo of Edison looking down at a light bulb with his typical work suit on and an intense look in his eye. The statue had to be a standing figure, Cottrill said, so he tried moving Edison a number of different ways before he settled on one particular idea.
“I started with him looking down at this light bulb and moved the gesture around and started looking for something that spoke to me,” he said. “When I raised that arm holding the light bulb it just came alive. I realized it was this universal gesture. He offered this great advancement in the light bulb, and it changed the world. He changed the way the world lives. He changed our culture, our society.”
Plans for the Edison statue still must be finalized. Cottrill will go to Washington, D.C., to meet with the Capitol architect and have him approve the submission. Fund-raising for the statue will continue in the meantime.