SCULPTED VISIONS

Alan Cottrill’s cast-bronze works tell the stories of people, places and moments. They are installed across Ohio and far beyond, and all of them begin in his Zanesville studio. We visited to learn about his process and the road that led him to finding his passion as an artist.

The two figures rest side by side, arms outstretched toward each other, fingers inches apart. Alan Cottrill made the life-size sculptures in the image of himself and his wife, and although the works bear the funereal touches of an eternal memorial, they honor the living. On the side of the sarcophagus bearing Cottrill’s likeness are these words: “Here beside me lies the most wonderful person I ever met.”

The sculptures are powerful, and they immediately stop visitors to the second floor of the artist’s Zanesville studio, imploring them to take a closer look. Each bears the intricate details that are hallmarks of Cottrill’s cast-bronze creations.

Downstairs, clad in a plain gray T-shirt and jeans, the 71-year-old sculptor presides over an environment that is casual but never boring. The mood is light, buoyed by his ornery yet clever sense of humor, but the feeling that there are tasks to be done hangs in the air. With a new part of the sculpting process coming into play each day, Cottrill is always busy, and the works pour from his hands.

He has been sculpting here seven days a week since he bought the studio in 2003. Over the course of his career, he has created more than 400 life-size statues and busts — most of which have been commissions — that can be found throughout Ohio and beyond. The second level of his studio houses the museum that features around 300 pieces, with a couple hundred more downstairs adding up to what Cottrill describes as the largest assemblage of works by any living sculptor in the world.

The bronze pieces spill out beyond the studio’s doors. Thirty of them are neatly lined up against the building and parade along the sidewalk down Sixth Street, past the chainlink fence of a construction-equipment rental center and toward the Muskingum River that weaves through the heart of Zanesville.

Outside the building, a more than 8-foot-tall vase pays homage to the Weller Pottery Co. that operated in town for 76 years. Overhead, a Native American figure stands atop the corner of the building, arms outstretched toward the sky. Farther down the street, a baby penguin spreads its wings while standing on the back of a lamb, Ohio native Jesse Owens shows off the gold medals he won at the 1936 Olympics, and a black bear rears back on its hind legs.

These statues — duplicates that came from a secondary casting of the originals — scream roadside America to Cottrill, who put them on public display simply because people liked them. From the sidewalks of Zanesville to Pennsylvania to Georgia to California to West Point Military Academy in New York, Cottrill’s detailed sculptures stand sentry.

“I’ve been characterized in the press as a creative entrepreneur. I didn’t know I was. I just figured it out,” Cottrill says. “I never had a business course in my life. It’s not quantum physics, although I’ve studied that and understand it. Business, to me, was a whole lot easier.”

Alan Cottrill grew up less than 10 miles away from his studio in White Cottage, a quiet part of Muskingum County that sits just beyond the now-bustling Maysville Pike and its collection of commercial shopping and chain restaurants.

The sculptor took just a total of six weeks of art classes during his time at Maysville High School before graduating in 1970 and moving on to Findlay College. When a rotator cuff injury ended his football career, he left college and became a milkman like his father and then served in the U.S. Army as a tank driver during the end of the Vietnam War. Art had not been anywhere on his mind.

“I liked art intuitively, it [just] wasn’t part of our culture,” Cottrill says. “In my area, it wasn’t part of the culture. In my family, it certainly wasn’t.”

After the war, Cottrill’s life took various turns, but all were directed at growing a business. After becoming the owner of four Domino’s pizza franchises in Ohio, he made a visit to the corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. On that trip, he met his wife of 45 years, Susan.

“The second time I ever saw her, within a half hour I looked at her and told her we were going to be married,” he recalls. “Ten or 11 weeks later we got married, and it’s probably the best decision I’ve ever made.”

The pair founded the successful Pennsylvania-based pizza chain Four Star Pizza. Cottrill later began working trade mis- sions for the U.S Department of Commerce, visiting Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan.

In 1990, his friend, Jeff Moyer, planned to do some stone carvings of religious figures at the California University of Pennsylvania, where another friend, Ray Dunlevy, was chair of the art department, and asked Cottrill for help. The rotator cuff injury Cottrill had sustained years earlier had never healed right, and the task of hammering a chisel against stone was too much physical strain. Moyer directed him toward a lump of clay in the far corner of the room where they were working. Cottrill began to fashion a head, and it sparked a newfound passion.

“It was magical,” Cottrill says. “I use the analogy, ‘it was like the first time I kissed a girl.’ ”

About six months later, a drunk driver hit Cottrill while he was riding his motorcycle. Between life-threatening injuries and a bone infection from a surgery, the future was uncertain. He spent three months in recovery, giving him time to reflect and rechart the course of his life, which led him to open an art studio in his Washington, Pennsylvania, home’s carriage house that same year.

“I turned to my wife and said, ‘All I want to do is sculpt. Take the pizza business, do what you want with it. I don’t care if I live in a tent,’” Cottrill recalls.

After returning from studying art in New York between 1992 and 1994, he opened a studio and gallery in downtown Washington. In 2003, he came back to Ohio and purchased the Zanesville studio where he works today.

“We moved into a little room in the studio for five and a half years,” Cottrill says. “[I] worked morning till night sculpting seven days a week, happy as hell. I pretty much lost all my money but gained my happiness.”

The earthy smell of clay hangs in the air and white ceramic dust clings to the studio floor. Cottrill’s desk, just around the corner from the studio’s entrance, is covered with family photos and books. Just beyond it, the artist is turning a towering mass of clay into a sculpture of a cheesemaker that will one day stand across from the World’s Largest Cuckoo Clock in Sugarcreek, Ohio. His hands make gentle, deliberate motions to get the arm muscles of the cheesemaker just so.

Nothing pulls Cottrill’s focus from his work, even a visitor entering his space. One of his two full-time studio employees, Rachel Girton, introduces herself and launches into an overview of the works on display, including a series of photos that offer insight into Cottrill’s bronze-casting process.

Once a commission comes in, he logs it on a yellow legal pad. The name of the project is on the far left with an estimate of how long it will take him to sculpt, followed by how long it will take to cast at Coopermill Bronzeworks, the foundry Cottrill started with his friend, Charles Leasure, in 1996. (It employs three full-time and two part-time employees.) Depending on the size of the project, the whole process can take weeks to several months.

Cottrill first sculpts each work from clay and brushes a rubber mold over the pieces before covering the rubber with plaster. After the rubber and plaster layers dry, they are cut apart symmetrically to create a mold that melted wax can be brushed onto, forming a hollow wax cast.

The wax cast is then covered in a ceramic shell at the foundry to make a mold. The wax is then melted out. Once the ceramic shell is emptied, the melted bronze is poured in. When Cottrill gets it back, the ceramic is removed, the bronze figure is sandblasted and the sculpture is welded together if cast in multiple pieces. The process is finished with a coat of patina coloring, lacquer and wax.

When Cottrill isn’t creating, he is passing along the knowledge of his craft to Girton and his newest studio employee, Connor Allison. In the wax room located in the back of the studio, Girton, who has been working in the studio since 2009, uses a blowtorch to melt together wax pieces to create a mold for an Ohio University commission.

“The most amazing thing about this job is that things are not always the same, and that’s what I love about it … the next day might be completely different,” she says. “It’s an honor in and of itself. My hands have touched this piece of work during the whole process and people are going to see that for tens, hundreds, potentially even thousands of years.”

Allison is building a small wax model of a tiger on a podium. The completed 7-foot-tall tiger will stand on an 8-foot-obelisk in front of Circleville High School. Cottrill examines the model constructively, noting that the back muscles of the tiger need more definition and the ribcage needs less arch. His keen eye for the craft allows him to evaluate a piece in seconds. Cottrill says he appreciates these moments in a profession that is largely spent solo.

“I love to study people. I did that long before I started sculpting, and it has helped me so much when I sculpt because I look at somebody and, very often, I can feel them,” Cottrill says. “I guess I didn’t realize everybody doesn’t do that. … I can tell so much about a person just the way they carry themselves, the expression on their face. I love that.” that’s a way to make sure that his legacy is intact because no day is guaranteed.”

African masks hang on the walls from floor to ceiling, what Cottrill describes as powerful representations of human faces. A second room houses a wall of busts, including a self-portrait of the artist from decades earlier.

“I did that when the guy hit me on my motorcycle,” the sculptor recalls. “When I was strong enough to sit up in bed … I could sculpt for five minutes and then rest for 15, and I did that for weeks.”

Near the back of the museum stands various nude statues made during Cottrill’s studies at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York. The human forms carry a lifelike accuracy thanks to a stint of anatomy study at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. On another wall hangs a portrait of “The Ascent of Humanity,” an installation at the California University of Pennsylvania that showcases humans through time from Cro-Magnon man all the way to a female astronaut. Thirteen other figures between them depict how humans have progressed through the ages.

In Ohio, Cottrill is known for his works that depict some of our state’s favorite sons. He created the statue of Milan-born inventor Thomas Edison on display at the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. In Columbus, his sculpture of Newcomerstown native Woody Hayes is proudly displayed at The Ohio State University, as is his statue of Jesse Owens, standing draped in medals in front of the track-and-field venue named in his honor.

Alan Cottrill Sculpture Studio is open to the public every day except for Sunday, and for a small suggested donation, visitors can head upstairs to the museum displaying hundreds of his works alongside plaques that tell their story. Written mostly by the artist’s daughter, Sarah Cottrill, the text on each plaque offers details of what was happening in her father’s life at the time a piece was created and outlines the sculpting process for each.

“Having that museum upstairs is a testament to his hard work and his mastery,” says Sarah, now a lawyer in the Navy, stationed in Italy. “He cares a lot about legacy, and so, for me,

Although Cottrill is but one person, each of his works reflects in one way or another what lies inside of him, be it the adventuring spirit of astronaut John Glenn or the steady work ethic of an anonymous cheesemaker.

“My goal is to be the best living figurative sculptor in the world,” he says. “How do I do that? I had to outwork every living sculptor, outthink them and out-feel them, have more passion. In the last 32 years, I think I’ve outworked every one of ’em, probably out-thought ’em — because I think hard — and I’ve had a hell of a lot of passion.”

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE SKIES OVER CHARLES MILL LAKE IN THE FALL OF 1973 ere was no reason for Vollmer not to take Coyne seriously — indeed, Vollmer later said, “I personally have an extremely high regard for his integrity and capability” — even with a story as fantastic as the one he was about to share. Coyne told him that he and three other reservists had been ying back from Columbus the night before and had not only seen an unidenti ed ying object but nearly crashed into it.

STANDS AS ONE OF THE MOST CREDIBLE UFO EXPERIENCES IN UNITED STATES HISTORY. KNOWN AS THE COYNE INCIDENT, THE EVENTS OF THAT OCTOBER NIGHT REMAIN A MYSTERY.

On October 19, 1973, P.J. Vollmer, the chief of operations for the Federal Aviation Administration at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, received a visit from Lawrence Coyne, a police officer who was also an Army active-duty veteran, still in the reserves.

Following his enlistment in 1955 a er graduating from James Ford Rhodes High School in Cleveland, Coyne had been commissioned as an o cer. He had also been certi ed with Special Forces and was an experienced pilot of both helicopters and airplanes.

A cigar-shaped cra , ying with the speed of a jet ghter, caught up to the helicopter, seemingly dragging it higher into the air as a green light scanned the inside. And then, just as suddenly as the encounter happened, it was over.

“We felt a bounce and then the other cra took o to the northeast,” Coyne recalled later.

With added urgency, the helicopter returned to Cleveland, and Coyne looked for someone — anyone — he could o cially tell his tale to.

“In a case of this kind, I don’t know anybody that I would believe any more,” Vollmer said of Coyne. “I trust his judgment without a question of a doubt. I don’t know what happened, but I do know — I could tell from the tremor of his voice, which wasn’t much — that he was shook.”

John Healey, who was on the helicopter the night of Oct. 18, 1973 as well, was also a police o cer, a detective in Cleveland, and recounted the same story to a colleague the same day Coyne was telling Vollmer about it. “It scared the living hell right out of me,” said Healey, who, like Coyne, had been a UFO skeptic right up until the night before.

Eventually, Coyne told the story to his cousin, a reporter for e Plain Dealer. He told it to “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling for a documentary. He told talk show host Dick Cave . He even appeared before the United Nations. e Coyne Incident, as it has become known in the UFO community, remains one of the most credible accounts of human encounters with a UFO. But it’s still as mysterious as it was a half-century ago.

Before the Wright brothers took to the sky in Ki y Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, even before the Montgol er brothers ew their rst hot-air balloon in France in 1783, there had been stories of unidenti ed ying objects. In a 1974 documentary, “UFOs: Past, Present and Future” — in which he interviews Coyne and the crew — Rod Serling talks about phantom chariots above the sky in ancient Rome and tyrants of the air in the Holy Roman Empire.

But in the 20th century, technology — advanced in no small part due to a pair of world wars — enabled humankind to further explore the skies. During World War II, planes dropped bombs on strategic targets, ghter planes engaged in dog ghts and rockets were developed that could be launched from one nation to hit a target in another. e war ended with the demonstration of the most powerful weapon the world had ever seen: the atomic bomb. As a new Cold War began between the United States and the Soviet Union, the possibility of nuclear war hung heavy.

In 1946, Scandinavia was beset by a series of reports of “ghost rockets.” e following year, a pilot in the state of Washington claimed to see a grouping of round ying objects near Mount Rainier on June 24. News coverage of the day called them “ ying saucers.”

It was one of many sightings of unidenti ed ying objects in the western United States; the most famous of which occurred near Roswell, New Mexico. Conspiracy theories soon took shape that a ying saucer had crashed in the desert and was con scated by the military, but the United States Air Force said decades later — a er the fall of the Soviet Union — that it was remnants of a weather balloon monitoring the skies for Soviet radiation testing. ( e ere were hundreds of reported UFO sightings in Ohio alone during the end of 1973. Tremors reminiscent of those created by sonic booms were recorded by earthquake detectors in Pennsylvania that October. Also that month, two men in Pascagoula, Mississippi, claimed they were abducted by aliens, and Ohio Gov. John Gilligan claimed to have seen a UFO in the sky over Michigan while driving with his wife through Ann Arbor. But nothing was as remarkable as the Coyne Incident, standing out, Serling said the following year, “because of the credibility of the witnesses.”

USSR would not get its own atomic bomb until 1949.) Clearly, these UFOs could be a national security risk, and the U.S. Air Force launched Project Sign to investigate. Project Sign was supplanted by Project Grudge, and that was supplanted by Project Blue Book, which was headquartered at Wright-Pa erson Air Force Base near Dayton and lasted until 1969. Its o cial nal report released in 1985 stated that 12,618 unidenti ed ying objects were sighted. Of those, only 701 were unexplained. e Air Force also said that there was no evidence that the unexplained sightings posed a national security threat, nor was there evidence that the sightings were any kind of extraterrestrial vehicles.

But the sightings continued. As the United States began space exploration in the 1960s, astronauts and ground control reported seeing unidenti ed cra ying in the highest reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. Even the Apollo 11 crew reported seeing an unidenti ed cra in space as it rocketed toward the moon.

In the fall of 1973, central and southwest Ohio were abuzz with a series of sightings of unexplained aircra . It was a fraught time in world history. Richard Nixon was trying to hang on to the presidency as the investigation deepened into the Watergate break-in. Meanwhile, Syria and Egypt a acked the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights on Oct. 6, which was the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. It was a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union, which were closer to nuclear war than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Wright-Pa erson Air Force Base was a hub of activity that fall as the United States airli ed supplies to its Israeli allies. Could some of the sightings be waved away as misidenti cation of U.S. aircra arriving and departing? Were Soviet spy aircra watching? Or was it beings from another world, keeping an eye on ours to make sure we didn’t immolate ourselves?

At 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 18, 1973, Coyne, Arrigo Jezzi, Robert Yanacsek and Healey took o from Port Columbus International Airport on a Bell UH-1H Super Huey helicopter on the way to Cleveland. ey had own to Columbus for their regularly scheduled ight physical, which had nished around 10 p.m. and went directly to the airport. Healey noted later that they were all cold sober and in perfect health for the ight, making their account even more believable.

It was a clear, cloudless night, with a li le wind and visibility for 15 miles or more. e helicopter was about 2,500 feet o the ground, ying 90 knots (a li le more than 103 mph). Shortly a er 11 p.m., they were ying north over Charles Mill Lake near Mans eld in north-central Ohio when Yanacsek spo ed a red light in the east that seemed at rst to be ying parallel to the helicopter, then ying right at it. Coyne initially thought it was a jet and radioed Mans eld to see if there were any aircra in the air at the time, ge ing no answer beyond an acknowledgement of their communication.

Coyne took evasive action, diving the helicopter, but the other aircra followed.

Coyne braced for impact, closing his eyes, sti ening up and awaiting his fate. ere was no crash. Coyne then heard Healey say, “Look at that.” e men in the helicopter went on to have active and varied careers, and their credibility remained beyond reproach a er the incident. In fact, the National Enquirer awarded them $5,000 for having the most credible and valuable report of a UFO encounter.

Directly in front of them was a 60-foot-long, silver cigar-shaped cra . e red light they’d seen was on the front. On the back was a white light, and a green light underneath it illuminated the entire interior of the helicopter as it shone in, almost like it was examining the cra and its crew. e radio wasn’t working, the compass was spinning out of control and Coyne realized the helicopter was actually rising more than 3,500 feet above the ground.

And then, as if it was satis ed with what it had seen, the cigar-shaped cra turned away slowly, then sped up and disappeared out of sight. e helicopter continued to Cleveland none the worse for wear with one noticeable exception: e compass was broken and couldn’t be xed. e unit had to be replaced.

In 1978, Coyne testi ed before the United Nations, a esting to what he saw, saying, “I am convinced this object was real and that these types of incident require a thorough investigation,” and advocating an international e ort to maintain order for yers who might have similar encounters.”

Also testifying that day was astrophysicist Jacques Vallee, who went a step further, saying that the exploration of UFOs could be a gateway to a new and be er world.

“It is our choice to treat it as a threat or as an opportunity for human knowledge.”