Thursday, February 28, 2002
Solar system comeback
As I was driving down NW 8th Avenue, a group of wooden stakes topped with red plastic ribbon caught my eye.
Then I saw another group and then another, and the spacing looked familiar.
"It looks like the solar system is making a comeback," I thought.
 Elizabeth Indianos, an artist in Tarpon Springs who graduated from the University of Florida, fashioned the molds for the 10 obelisks that represent each of the planets and the sun in the solar system. They'll be placed along NW 8th Avenue across from Westside Park starting early Saturday morning. MICHAEL C. WEIMAR/The Gainesville Sun
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A couple of phone calls later I confirmed my suspicions. And while it may come as a shock to those of a more conservative theological persuasion, I discovered a woman is creating this latest edition of the solar system.
"This is my first universe," said Tarpon Springs artist Elizabeth Indianos, as she put some finishing touches on Saturn.
From 1993 to 1996 the Alachua Astronomy Club sponsored a series of signs stretching east along NW 8th Avenue that was a scale model of the solar system. It started with a marker for the sun near NW 34th Street and ended with Pluto in the blackness of space near the base of the big hill several blocks away.
It was a neat little addition to the city, but it was plagued by vandals and thieves in its short lifetime. The signs were eventually taken down - but not forgotten.
"We had a lot of people telling us they missed it," said Howard Cohen, vice president of the Alachua Astronomy Club.
So for several years the club worked with city officials on a solar system comeback project. The club, with several major donations, raised nearly $25,000 to foot the bill; the city also kicked in $5,000. The installation will begin early Saturday morning, and this time the planets will be hard to miss and even harder to steal.
Each planet, along with the sun, will be represented by a 14-foot-tall pastel-colored concrete obelisk that weighs over 6,000 pounds. Each is inscribed with its planetary symbol and carries a depiction of its mythological namesake.
With help from assistant Mark Jacoby, Indianos fashioned the molds. Her artistic palette was a wheelbarrow where the concrete was dyed to the right color. With the help of the crew at Cement Precast, each planet was poured into being one 5-gallon bucket of concrete at a time.
 With the help of the crew at Cement Precast, the obelisks for each planet was poured into being one 5-gallon bucket of concrete at a time. Clockwise from left, artist Elizabeth Indianos and team members Mike Davis, Mike Harper, Jeff Stanford and Joe Stanford. MICHAEL C. WEIMAR/The Gainesville Sun
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The sun was the first and provided a valuable lesson on just what it would take to make an entire solar system.
"After the first one we realized just how labor intensive and how much hard work this was going to be," she said.
Indianos had to come up with creative solutions to a couple of artistic mishaps of construction. When pouring Mars the "s" was knocked loose, leaving her a planet named Mar. That was easily fixed by chiseling in the missing letter.
But in Jupiter, not only did the final "r" get obliterated, but the "e" was knocked crooked. Again the chisel added the missing letter, and she added a depiction of the outstretched finger of God in Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam." It appears to be pushing the "e" slightly out of whack.
Around the bases of the pieces Indianos added quotes from a variety of sources who wrote about space, the stars and the planets. The words of Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg, Carl Sagan, Ralph Waldo Emerson and many others are included. She couldn't resist adding one of her favorites: "The impossible takes 15 minutes longer."
The pieces are adorned with mirrors, marbles, and shiny rock globs called geodes. I thought that was some kind of compact car made by Chevy, but Merriam-Webster informed me it was "a nodule of stone having a cavity lined with crystals or mineral matter."
Several other cities have solar system walks, some are fancier and more expensive, but Cohen says Gainesville's will have some advantages over the others.
"This is linear, you can stand at one end and sight down the whole thing," he said.
It's also not too big or too small. Stretched out over nine-tenths of a mile, the scale is one to 4 billion.
"It's amazing when you walk it, the feeling of the spacing, the size, the scale and the scope," he said.
There will eventually be a bronze plaque attached to each piece that will give information about the individual planet and will show a scale comparison of its size to the sun. The plaques have been designed, but it will take another $15,500 to pay for them.
The project wasn't Indianos' first venture into space. She created the large "Mythic Constellations" piece that hangs over the concession stand at the Royal Park Stadium 16. You will also find her "Space Bouillabaisse 2000" covering a wall in the theater's lobby. She also fashioned a giant Earth that's on display at the Tampa airport.
She doubts we Earthlings will be visiting the planets anytime soon, so she thinks she's offering up an alternative to space travel.
"The only way you are going to go is through your imagination," she said.
« Photographs and text copyright © 2002 by The Gainesville Sun »
AAC Added Note: The original concept for a solar walk in Gainesville was developed in 1993 by Chip Sullivan, a Gainesville resident and Alachua Astronomy Club (AAC) member. Mr. Sullivan helped raise money for a series of signs he placed along NW 8 Avenue. (The October 1993 issue of the AAC newsletter indicates the AAC funded the Jupiter sign.) The signs were vandalized over the years and the remaining signs were taken down by Mr. Sullivan in 1996. The Alachua Astronomy Club, Inc. was not directly involved in erecting the original planet signs.