The Art of the Brick

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Presidents

rushMore

It’s possible that I have spent more time in the

Mount Rushmore gift shop than any American

artist alive. When my mother’s father, Jack, retired

from his career as a television newsman in the

late 1970s, he and my grandmother moved into

a log cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota,

almost at the feet of presidents Washington,

Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln.

Theirs was a real log cabin, the Abraham Lincoln

kind with the logs stacked on top of one another.

It was a modest cabin on the edge of a pine

forest, and it overlooked a lake, like something

right out of a postcard. I stayed in a loft upstairs

This memorial will crown the height of land between

the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Seaboard,

where coming generations may view it for all time.

—President Calvin Coolidge, at the opening of

work on Mount Rushmore

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that you could get to only by climbing a ladder.

There wasn’t a lot of headroom in the loft—you

couldn’t stand up there—but when you’re eight

years old, it’s plenty of space.

My grandparents were members of the National

Memorial, meaning that they could go and look

at the presidents whenever they liked. You could

catch a glimpse of Washington from the highway

for free, but if you wanted to see the other three,

you had to do as all the other good citizens

did and pay your park fees. My grandparents’

pass also meant that whenever we visited them,

which was often, we would go too.

I must have seen Mount Rushmore dozens of

times. I don’t know why my parents also felt

the need to keep going back, but they did, and

we went with them often. We would go and

admire it (who knew that one day I would be

a sculptor?), and I have a lot of photos of it,

from every conceivable angle. The authorities

were also pretty innovative when it came to

finding new ways for visitors to experience

Mount Rushmore. They had fireworks, laser

shows, brunches, and midnight concerts. And

Iexperienced them all, at least once.

The thing that you first notice about Mount

Rushmore is that it’s not as big as you thought it

would be. It’s enormous, of course; each face is

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60 feet high. But the surrounding

mountains have a tendency to dwarf

anything created by man.

Perhaps that’s simply a matter of

the original plan. The father-and-

son sculpting team of Gutzon and

Lincoln Borglum intended to depict

the presidents to the waist but

were limited by funding.

The other thing you notice about

Mount Rushmore while visiting is

the number of tchotchkes you can

put Mount Rushmore on. I was often

left to wander the gift shop alone

as my parents and grandparents

indulged their passion for looking at

the presidents, and I was fascinated.