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DETROIT
JEWISH NEWS

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Arts Entertainment

The sculptors,. as passionate about
art as the five players about their sport,
did most of their work in a studio
they've opened for a colony of artists.
"It's been a very intensive project
with several other people working on
it," explains Amrany, who particular-
ly involved Lou Cella and Gary
Tillery and will include their signa-
tures on the statuary. "We
were in Detroit several
times, visiting the stadium,
reviewing the places and
potential problems and
advising ideas and solu-
tions.
"If you look at the stadi-
um as a large crown, the
sculptures will be like the
diamonds on the crown,
and we thought stainless
steel would be the most
suitable material. It corn-
bines the modern look of
today plus the grayish
effects of the old time.
With the wind and storms
that happen in the
Midwest, we wanted to make sure the
pieces would be secure, and stainless
steel can do that."
Although the scale gives all the
players a height of 8 feet, there is a
range of 11 to 17 feet off the ground
based on what each player is doing.
"When Julie and I drew this, it
appeared to us that there would be
almost an imaginary line with Ty
Cobb as the lowest figure, sliding into
a base, and Al Kaline as the highest,
jumping up to get a ball," Amrany
explains. "In between, Greenberg is
hitting, Gehringer throwing and
Newhouser pitching."
Jeffrey Spear, senior designer of the
ballpark for HOK Sport, is pleased with
the way the sculpture has turned out.
"The idea for adding the statues was
brought to us," Spear says. "Mike
Ilitch has a great sense of history and
wanted to include that element in the
park. His staff began looking at history
issues and came up with ideas. One
was the 'decades' monuments that cele-
brate 10-year spans over the past 100
years, and the other was the statues.
"I think the sculptors did excellent
work because the figures give a great
sense of life while freezing moments
in time. They also depict what these
players were all about."
Since the idea for the sculpture
came later in the planning, the area
picked for the monument made use
of available space, according to Spear.
The celebrated players will be placed
between the scoreboard and a special

moving water and music display.
Because the park is made of stainless
steel painted green, the gray stainless
steel of the statuary will stand out.
Even though the Amrany team had
a tight time crunch, they vowed not to
scrimp on their research. The sculptors
created a group of assistants who
picked up hundreds of pictures, docu-

ments and related information. They
were in contact with the Hall of Fame
and talked to the athletes' relatives.
"That's the way we approach every
project that we work on," says
Amrany, who has sculpted marathon
runners and soccer players.
The couple, who met in 1985,
have learned to merge their talents so
that they are almost indistinguishable
in their joint projects and then
emphasize their individual artistry for
the work they do alone.
"I had been living in San Francisco
and went to Italy specifically to study
stone carving," recalls Rotblatt-
Amrany, who received her bachelor's
degree from the University of
Colorado and later studied at the
College of Marin in California and
the Art Institute of Chicago, where
she now teaches.
"Artists would congregate in those
small towns, and we were working in
different studios when we got to
know each other. I was in Italy for
about eight months, and Omri was
there for about a year. I went to Israel
to visit him and then moved back to
California before we decided to get
married. I moved to Israel to live on •
the kibbutz where he was, and we
went to Chicago two years later."
Amrany's background was less aca-
demic than that of his wife.
Essentially self-taught, he wanted to
study in Italy but had to wait for a
decision made by members of
Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov Meuchad,