Metal Trail

We had met Petr Vaněk earlier at an event called “From Scrap to Art” which was held in Mladá Boleslav in 2012. However, that was a one-time event. At that event, Petr Vaněk had created a beautiful metal chair from scrap. And that's when we exchanged contact details. Later he created the very successful "Dragon Throne" for the city, which is located opposite the entrance to the Templ palace.

In 2015, we did not hesitate to invite him to the Metal Symposium and he accepted our invitation. He preferred to work with his own tools and expressed his intention to create a life-sized statue of Václav Laurin.

On the first day of the Symposium, he picked up his materials and got down to work. Later we were told that there was a problem with dimensions and the work would probably be larger than our rules (i.e. work height up to 2 metres). We faced this head on, one might say. Such things happen. The bigger problem was that the work was big and heavy and Petr Vaněk was working downstairs, in the basement of the Industrial School. It took seven men, including the artist, to get the work out of there.

Although we always declare that all works created within the Metal Symposium will be installed in public space, we made an exception in this case. The Industrial School expressed an interest to have this sculpture placed in the school premises. And so the statue of Václav Laurin is located inside the school gates, as a reminder of what a monumental work can come into existence at the Metal Symposium.

Find the artwork on GPS 50.4167808N, 14.9047589E

For more information on this artist see:

https://sector66.cz/

vanek@sector66.cz

https://www.facebook.com/discoversector66/

https://www.instagram.com/sector.66/

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