Midway Gardens Sprite

I was fixing a stature for some friends and one of them mentioned how much the top half of the statue looked like a dead person lying on the porch. So while waiting for some epoxy to dry I wondered what else the poor little Sprite could look like. The original Sprite was designed for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Midway Gardens built in Chicago starting in 1913 and sculpted by Alphonso Lannelli.

The Big Sleep Sprite  Clown Sprite Hipster Sprite Grim Sprite, yes they get worse. S&M SpriteBondage Sprite 

The statue is made of cement and some soft aggregates and very fine fibers. It seems like the outer skin plays a large part of keeping the statue together, the mixture within is not all that hard. I used a masonry drill bit to drill holes for a strengthening rod, but I found that a regular drill bit worked as well. The following photo shows the fibers.

Some folks add fiberglass fibers to hypertuffa pots and troughs, but I don’t.

After the epoxy has dried I will fill the cracks with transparent  phenoseal caulk mixed with some of the dust created when drilling the holes for the strengthening rod. I tried mixing some of the dust with the epoxy, but it was too dark. I also tried mixing the statue dust with some Portland cement, but it was too green. The fuzzy photo below shows the cement mix on the right and a sample of the phenoseal mix on the left. Plus the phenoseal will do a better job of keeping out any moisture.

Here is the finished Sprite.

Fixed cracks.  Hopefully moss will grow on the upper part of the statue just as on the base and the cracks will become less noticeable.

I used cement caulk around the feet of the Sprite and dusted with Sprite guts dust. There was an uneven gap around the foot of the statue and the base, but I didn’t want to take a chance and try to separate the two and try to reattach. That would have been asking for trouble.