... The obelisk at Fermilab stands 32 feet high including its 4 foot base.The work is fabricated of three gleaming stainless steel plates, each 1/4 inch in thickness. Each plate is made up of twenty three smaller plates which were edge-welded together by Wilson.
The three hyperbolically-shaped plates were then welded together at the edges to form the three-sided hyperbolic obalisk. The surface was ground by hand to remove the mill-scale and a textured finish of overlapping circles was produced using very coarse sanding disks, which left deep grooves that catch the light from all directions. The effect of the light varies with weather and atmosperic conditions.
Dr. Wilson worked on the sculpture before and after working hours, at lunch-time and on weekends since January of 1978. Toolmaker Charles Matthews of the machine shop assisted him. In order to learn to weld, Wilson apprentices himself to Masterwelder James Forester of the Machine Shop who put Wilson through a course of instruction in the art of welding.
After a certain amount of "learning on the job", Dr. Wilson then did nearly all of the welding and much of the finishing work personally in the Cut Shop at 27 Winnebago in the village.
The base was installed on May 5 (1978); the sculpture erection took place on May 9. Both pieces were hauled fromt he Village by flat bed truck and lifted into place by crane.
Dr. Wilson drew pencil sketches to illustrate his original concept; then a small lucite model was made by the Model Shop. Henry Hinterberger, director of the Technical Services and Bill Jones, shop foreman provided overall supervision.
Dr. Wilson studied sculpture in Italy at the Academia Belle Arti in Rome in 1961. He has two showings of his work in Ithaca, New York where he served as a director of the Cornell University's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies before founding Fermilab in 1968. Dr. Wilson was commissioned to create a large sculpture for the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, NJ and another for Ithaca's Festival Theater.