Calexico Veterans Monument

elchrist · Posted: 29 May 2007 12:45 PM Post subject: Calexico Veterans Monument

Nice looking veterans monument to the left of city hall. Seriously, it's about time we get some nice quality looking stuff around here.

Who designed it and what is the meaning of its design? Is it unique to Calexico or is the same monument located across the country?

My interpretation of the monument is it's a half buried waving flag and the water represents tears shed for those who fought and/or died in war. Black was chosen to not represent one race/nationality, but all.

What's your interpretation of this artwork?

ANCOLE · Posted: 29 May 2007 03:34 PM Post subject:

I havent seen it, but I sure hope it looks nice. Too bad alot of people dont appreciate that kinda stuff.

whitebread · Bulldogs' QB Joined: 16 May 2007 Posts: 91

I agree that the monument is very nice. The work on the monument itself is grade A. It looks really nice. My only concern is with the quality of the work on the plaques that carry our veterans names on them. They are attached on a cement ledge that runs around the perimeter of the monument. They seem like they lacked the same quality of work that the monument did. They are attached and are not all correctly mounted. Some aren't straight and just with the curve of the cement, the rectangular shaped plagues cannot negoiate the concave of the cement. I hope that nobody decides to be cool and goes and vandalizes the monument, it is very nice.

gee4mac · Posted: 13 Jun 2007 02:54 PM Post subject:

Desert Valley Monument provided those plaques you are talking about. I designed them. The plaques themselves are of great quality. Plus, we got the veterans an awesome deal on them. Why is it that they are not all perfectly straight? There's a couple of reasons. I installed about half of them myself. We had a plan, but the people in charge of the Project (in calexico) changed the whole deal. We were only given one day to mount these plaques, that friday before memorial day weekend. We were only given a couple of hours, like 6 to be exact.
We arrived at the location around 8AM, we were told to wait for Mr. Jesse Grimm (great fella btw) to arrive, to organize the location of the plaques, by family, etc etc. Then, the other fellas couldn't decide how to place them. Only on one side of monument, starting from left to right, etc. Finally they decided to divide the plaques (101 of them) like in half, 50 on one curve, 51 on the other, more or less. The cement curves were not perfect, their height/curve varies througout. It was impossible to place them perfectly, due to the curve and the shape of the plaques. Also, we were just going to glue the plaques to the cement, but after some tests I did here at the monument shop, the glue was so strong, and bonded so well to the bronze, that the face of the cement was coming right off when i tried to remove it. They were coming off with a flathead screwdriver, because of the cement being so brittle. That was going to create a problem, because it IS calexico, and someone is going to try to take one home or across the border. So we decided to put a couple pins behind the plaques (like long screws that stick out). We then had to drill 2 holes on the cement (per plaque, thats 204 holes with a Hammer Drill), fill those holes with industrial epoxy, place the pins in the holes, and wait for the epoxy to cure. This created a great bond, and it will make it very hard to remove any one of those plaques, but made it very difficult to align them. Oh, and add to that, many construction/city workers, the people doing the granite tiles, heavy machinery digging holes, dumping sand, the fact that the cement curves were being worked on as we were placing the plaques, and metiches interfering with our work.
Thats why they dont look as good as they should. We could of done a much better job on it, if they would of gotten themselves organized. Calexicans are BIG procrastinators. They waited till the last minute to finish the whole thing, and didn't give us enough time to do the quality work we do.