A nearly six-foot tall aluminum sculpture of Elon Musk’s head built by a Chilliwack artist is now complete.
Metal sculptor Kevin Stone built it for the creators of the Elon Goat Token ($EGT), an Elon Musk-themed cryptocurrency based in Arizona.
The piece is actually part of a larger sculpture that features Musk’s head on top of a goat’s body riding a rocket into space, surrounded by lightning. The sole purpose of the monument is to market the $EGT.
After some recent setbacks, he is expecting the head to finally be shipped this week.
He’s been working on it with his wife Michelle since January. Back at the end of May, he figured he had about a week’s worth of work left to do, but it turned out to be more.
Typically, Kevin works with steel, but the Musk head is completely different. Its base is made out of foam and then it was coated in the same material used to line truck beds. Next, the Stones covered the head in high-heat aluminum tape and then glued aluminum octagons all over it before Kevin welded them together.
It’s the glue that caused problems in the end. Turns out they used too much of it.
“Because of the heat, the glue melted into where I’m welding and then it contaminates it and then I can’t weld it,” Kevin said on May 26. “So now I’m having to go back where those bad areas are and try to clean the glue out of there and then re-weld it.”
The aluminum was also cracking in some spots when he was using a grinder.
As a result, it took more than a month longer than expected to finish the project. He said it was a difficult piece to work on and “an incredible challenge.”
“It’s very tedious, but it turned out pretty good for aluminum.”
READ MORE: Chilliwack metal sculptor makes giant Elon Musk head for cryptocurrency monument
Kevin gave a lot of credit to Michelle who did about 40 per cent of the work, which is the most work she’s done on one of his projects.
She worked on the nose, ears, back of the neck and hair. She cut the octagons and glued them into place.
“It’s just like a puzzle. You have to make that piece fit, not only on top and the bottom, but on the sides as well and all the curves,” Michelle said. “It was difficult, but I really enjoyed it.”
But her biggest accomplishment was Musk’s ears where there are more than 50 pieces of aluminum in each ear.
“I feel good about it… I actually helped with the fabrication part of it.”
In total, Kevin figures they spent more than 700 hours on Elon Musk’s head.
Just after the Canada Day long weekend, the piece was finally finished and Kevin said he’s happy with the results.
“I built Elon and how many people can actually make metal look like somebody?” he said. “Usually a metal face just kinda looks like a metal face, it doesn’t actually look like somebody. I’m pretty proud of it because it totally looks like him.”
The head was put in a crate this week and will be shipped to Arizona where the goat’s body and the rocket are being built.
“I wish I had more time to work on him, but he needs to be in Arizona to get mounted on a rocket. I could easily spend another three months working on him.”
When it’s all complete, the 30-foot long Elon goat monument will be towed to Austin, Texas and presented to Musk himself at his place of work, Tesla Inc. According to the cryptocurrency creators, they will be “demanding that Elon claims his goat.”
Kevin has four other projects on the go: a T-rex which will be going to a home in Penticton, a dragon for a private customer in the U.S., an abstract piece heading to Mexico, and an 18-foot eagle for the American Eagle Foundation in Tennessee.
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Email: jenna.hauck@theprogress.com
Twitter: @PhotoJennalism
