New Shark Sculpture At The Oklahoma Aquarium In Jenks

Tuesday, November 28th 2006, 9:59 am

By: News On 6

For years the Oklahoma Aquarium has been fishing for a way to finish off the entrance to the Aquarium. When no one took the bait, the Aquarium's deputy director decided to do it himself.

News on 6 reporter Rick Wells went to Jenks to see what's taking shape behind the scenes.

Kenny Alexopoulos is heading for his latest art project at the Oklahoma Aquarium. â€œIt's three bull sharks, 2 males pursuing a female." When he has a few minutes he slices off a slab of clay, grabs a rolling pin and goes to work. "I kind of doing the Martha Stewart thing."

It was always the plan at the aquarium to have a sculpture on a granite block near the front entrance. The project kept getting pushed aside for other things, besides it was expensive. "It would have been about $50,000 to $55,000 for an artist to come do this and have it cast in bronze." So he decided to do it himself, only one problem. "This is my first sculpture, I learned how to do all this on the Internet.â€

Of course, there's a considerable amount of artistic talent involved too. Alexopoulos has painted the murals at the Oklahoma Aquarium. So with help from the Internet, he went to work. Had a co-worker teach him to weld the metal framework. The yellow stuff is that aerosol spray expandable insulation. He did the shaping with a sander. "I was actually sculpting with a belt sander."

For the detail and proportion he used higher level math. â€œIf I know the distance from the tip of the nose to the base of the tail, which is what all these co-efficients are based on." Rick Wells: â€œthen everything else is a math problem?" Alexopoulos: "exactly."

Imagine if I'd paid attention in math class I might be a sculptor.

Alexopoulos hopes to have the model done in two or three months.