It’s safe to say that the 13-foot, 10,000-pound bronze sculpture that stood at Green and Wright streets is something akin to the University of Illinois’ Statue of Liberty or the school’s version of the lions at the entrance of the Art Institute of Chicago.
For 83 years, Alma Mater has served as the backdrop in perhaps hundreds of thousands of photographs of Illinois students on graduation day, and on thousands of other days when people simply want the iconic image of the state’s flagship university.
Alma’s got her playful side too. Apart from being a collegiate jungle gym, she carried a net during the volleyball team’s run to the 2011 NCAA championship match and sported a headband when the men’s basketball team made it to the Final Four in 2005.
For freshman convocation, she wears an orange T-shirt; for graduation, a cap, gown and sash. She gets a giant tub of popcorn for alum Roger Ebert’s Film Festival. And, during last fall’s Occupy movement, she showed her radical streak by wearing a Guy Fawkes mask.
But the bronze lady and her two attendants, Learning and Labor, are in dire need of a spa treatment, face-lift and sabbatical. That is about to happen in a Forest Park studio.
While the sculpture undergoes restoration 140 miles north of home and leaves an awkward gap at a campus gateway, those left behind are creatively trying to make the most of the emptiness. The next seven months provides plenty of time for that and for contemplating how a mass of weathered bronze evokes so much affection; how Alma’s absence makes Illini hearts grow fonder.
Angela Faillaci, a senior philosophy major from Algonquin, said Alma’s appeal probably has something to do with her approachability.
“The fact that you’re able to climb on it and take pictures with it makes it much more accessible to students than other places on campus,” said Faillaci, who has particularly valuable insight. She was Alma for a short time a few hours after the sculpture was lifted from its base on Aug. 7.
“We were having dinner and just kind of joking about how we should pose as the Alma Mater,” Faillaci recalled of the afternoon of Alma’s departure. A few minutes later, she and friends at Hendrick House residence hall gathered sheets from their beds, a chemistry apron, dorm room chair and headed for campus.
The result was what may have been the first live Alma Mater pose, featuring Paul Keutelian in apron, as the iron worker Labor, and Tony Cohen as Learning. Keutelian posted a photo of the moment on Facebook.
The next day, Faillaci said, “people were asking me if I was the Alma Mater.”
Accounting major Katie Chan, a junior from Willowbrook, took a little bolder approach to her Alma impersonation.
Chan, president of the 1867 Society, which encourages student giving to the university, and society members Arpan Roy and Clare Curtin obtained costumes and a Styrofoam throne from U. of I.’s Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and walked into the university’s board of trustees meeting Sept. 14.
It was something of a surprise, although the society had planned it with the office of public affairs and given Chancellor Phyllis Wise a heads-up.
“Everyone was clapping for us,” Chan said. “Board members were taking out their iPhones and taking pictures. They were smiling.”
After chatting with the trustees and taking more pictures with them, Chan said, the three donned sunglasses and struck the famous pose on the granite base.
“It was a great experience,” she said. “Students were walking by taking out camera phones.”
Posing as Alma Mater hasn’t become exactly common but it’s no longer that original either. In fact, a Marching Illini drum major and two other members of the band pose on it in a promotional video for the 2012 season.
“Everybody was really sad when we first heard that she was going to be moved,” Faillaci said, “especially because pretty much everyone wants a picture with her.”
But now, Faillaci added, “people have been having a very good time with the fact that they could be Alma, a pretty rare opportunity.”
Designer a son of Illinois
Alma’s designer was Lorado Taft, an internationally acclaimed sculptor whose pieces include the Fountain of the Great Lakes near the Art Institute and Fountain of Time on the Midway at the University of Chicago.
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Born in 1860 in Elmwood, near Peoria, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Illinois and maintained “an incredible devotion to the university,” said Robert La France, curator of premodern art at the Krannert Art Museum and a co-author of a book on Taft due out next year.
Familiar with Columbia University’s Alma Mater sculpture, which depicts a seated female figure, Taft designed his homage to be more active. Illinois’ Alma stands in front of her throne, reaching outward, embracing and welcoming the community. It also incorporates the university’s motto — “Learning and labor” — as a woman and man shaking hands behind her.
That “active stance energizes her welcoming gesture,” La France added, “which invites the community’s affection.” The gesture, he said, “is everything.”
It probably helps that two engravings on her granite pedestal read, “To thy happy children of the future, those of the past send greetings,” and, from Proverbs 31:28, “Her children arise up and call her Blessed.”
“Everybody wants to find something to rally around at a university, of course,” La France said, “and that sculpture is perfect for that.”
The university unveiled the sculpture in 1929 behind the school’s auditorium, then moved it to its present location in 1962, university historical archives show.
For eight years, Cliffton Utley has been a groundskeeper assigned to the campus area where Alma stands. He often takes photos of families with their cameras or, if they don’t have a camera, he’ll take out his, shoot a picture and email it to them, Utley said while taking a break on a recent Wednesday afternoon.
He’s seen graduating seniors line up with their families and wait for hours to get a picture with Alma. He’s arrived at work at his usual time of 7 a.m. and “seen people sleeping in the arms,” he said.
“Another great thing,” Utley said, “is that students will dare another to do something wild” on Alma and post it on Facebook.
For example?
“I don’t really want to get into something like this,” he said. But Utley did say Alma Mater is “known as a very romantic spot.”
“It’s been known to bring people together and tear them apart at the same time,” he added. “You meet somebody at a local establishment at 7 o’clock. At 11 o’clock, you’re here. Twelve o’clock, you’re split.”
Utley let go of a robust laugh.
“It’s one interesting evening and it’s all because of the Alma Mater.”
Utley videotaped Alma’s departure Aug. 7, which was attended by three TV stations, a couple of newspapers and people in lawn chairs, some who had driven two hours to watch. The removal took several hours and included hoisting the entire sculpture on a truck.
The restoration firm, Conservation of Sculpture & Objects Studio, has handled sculptures, including Taft’s Fountain of Time, and other historic structures across the country.
This job is budgeted for $100,000, but the studio has found deterioration to bolts securing sections of the sculpture that is more extensive than originally perceived, said Christa Deacy-Quinn, who serves on the committee coordinating the restoration. She is expecting recommendations from the studio soon.
It remains unclear whether the additional work will delay the restoration, which was set to be completed before May commencement, she said. This restoration would be Alma’s second. An art department professor supervised 1981 repairs, in which the sculpture was removed in two sections.
Although she’s absent, Alma continues to offer Facebook updates. A large cardboard cutout of her is appearing at campus functions, and Chan’s group will re-create the sculpture for this year’s homecoming parade Oct. 26.
Generational appeal
Samantha Chavez and Kyle Van den Bosch, a couple who are studying natural resources and environmental science, stopped at the vacant base Wednesday afternoon to take its GPS coordinates for a computer mapping class.
“I don’t know if there’s any loss of identity or anything like that,” said Van den Bosch. “Actually, I think it has been more special than it has been strange. We were kidding that it would be nice to graduate this year so we could take a picture in front of the no Alma Mater.”
That may be fun, but the couple’s 4-year-old daughter Lily is proof that Alma’s allure is strong and multigenerational.
Lily routinely asks to get frozen yogurt across Wright Street then sit with Alma, the couple said.
“Except this time, it wasn’t there,” Chavez said of their visit a couple of weeks ago, “so she stood up on (the base) and we took a picture of her.”
With her arms outstretched, welcoming future generations, like Alma would have wanted.