Chicago link to Classical Greece

By Ed Lowe
Senior writer

Alexander the Great lived from 356 until 323 BC. His 33-year career as a soldier and statesman marked the beginning of the Hellenistic Age and has had a profound effect on world history. In the 13 years he ruled, he conquered Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, Babylon and Persia. So, you might reasonably ask, how does this affect life in Chicago in 2002?

A group of Greek residents of the city felt that his memory should be memorialized in a big way and they planned to raise funds to make such a memorial in Greece. What better way to create a mammoth memorial than to carve a mountain in what was Alex's back yard?

Chicago based sculptor Andy Papas (whose Greek name is Tassos Papadoupoulos) created the plan and organized a foundation to raise money to build such a monument in a mountain in Thessalonika, a province in northern Greece on the coast of the Aegean Sea. He approached Angelos Frantzis, the mayor of the Greek resort town of St. George (Agios Georgios in Greek) who endorsed the project and then selected an appropriate mountain on which to carve a head of Alexander.

The chosen mountain is only 1500 feet from the sea. It stands 1800 ft tall, and the planned sculpture will rise a whopping 250 to 300 ft. in height — as tall as a 30-story building!

A money-raising foundation was established in Chicago and the Greek community responded to the project with contributions of more than $2 million. On Friday, June 14, the formal kickoff was held at the official entrance to Greek Town at the corner of Van Buren and Halsted streets. This is the site of a bronze statue of Artemis, goddess of beauty, and a small Greek peristyle that mark the beginning of the area. The statue was sculpted and donated to Chicago by Andy Papas.

At the event, organized to unveil a model of the face of Alexander that will be carved on the mountain, was the Mayor of St. George, Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), Andy Papas and a group of dignitaries from the Greek community of Chicago. The unveiling was followed by a reception honoring Papas held at the Athena Restaurant.

The statue follows in the great tradition of mountain carving that was begun in the U.S. with the carving of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. The stone faces in Rushmore were created by the sculptor Gutzon Borglum. Among his assistants working on the project was a young American born Pole named Korczak Ziolkowski (who preferred being called Korczak for short). Korczak worked on Mount Rushmore for about a year before he undertook an even larger project, the carving of a statue of the Native American chief, Crazy Horse. Although Korczak died in 1982, his work has continued under the supervision of several of his ten children.

Among those children is his daughter Monique Korczak. She has signed on to assist Andy Papas in the work to be done in Greece, a project that is even larger than Crazy Horse or Mount Rushmore. The carving of the 1800 foot high marble mountain in Greece will be done more efficiently using new technology never available during the years of work on Rushmore.

Carvers will have the use of high pressure water carving equipment and, according to Papas, "This will carve slots in the mountain like a knife slicing bread. Then, a steel wedge is driven into the slice and the stone cracks and falls away." Water for this slicing process is forced into the mountain at a pressure of 40,000 pounds per square inch. It's estimated that the carving of the Greek memorial will take from 10 to 20 years, but one immediate goal is to have a representative and identifiable feature of Alexander visible for the 2004 Olympic games that will be held in Greece.

"This feature might be a nose or an eye, but there will be something of the carving that will be seen for a hundred miles," according to Papas.

The model that was unveiled in Greek Town will be sent to Athens for a display there, but an additional maquette will be created for display in Chicago. The head of Alexander is a very smoothly carved, classical Grecian figure with flowing hair and finely chiseled features.

Papas grew up in suburban Oak Lawn and now maintains a studio at Lake St. and Damen Ave. He said that he had a few finished works on display but that he had not made any gallery affiliation for his work. Since he will be spending at least the next five to six years directly supervising the carving of the Grecian mountainside, no new works will be available.

In addition to the carving, another Chicagoan figures prominently in the plans for the Greek monument. Karl Geckler, an architect at Grand and Sacramento avenues, designed an amphitheater that will be constructed in front of the massive mountain to permit the presentation of programs in the shadow of Alexander's face.