Furnari said he did not agree with Kirk on “certain issues”.
“I wasn’t a fan of Charlie,” he said. “Like one thing that I couldn’t stand about him while he was alive [was] when he was talking about Palestine. [Kirk would say]: ‘Oh no, Palestine doesn’t exist.’ I thought: ‘Well, this guy must be out of his mind.’”
Instead, Furnari said he made the statue in an effort to “glorify and to exercise the first amendment, this freedom of speech” – although at points during the conversation, Furnari also said he made it to support Charlie Kirk’s wife; to “glorify democracy”; and to “commemorate a person”.
He later added: “Why am I making the statue? The same reason why Michelangelo did the Pietà, or Michelangelo did the David, or Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. Why? Just to commemorate a moment, you know, a person.”
Every sentence of this article makes me feel less sympathetic toward this guy.
Fucking amateur hour. Set up a paintball booth with it, 5 bucks per shot. Make a video of people shooting at the statue, post it everywhere, get money from views. Then, get a friend to raise funds to get the booth taken down (make up some bullshit about legal expenses). Disappear with the money.
This is just one idea. If I had a Charlie Kirk statue and the morals of this guy, I’d make 100,000 dollars in a week. Seriously, how can you be a sculptor with this little creativity?
paintball booth? not a real range?
You’d see less lasting returns having people fire real bullets at it. You could run the paintball thing for years.
It would have to cost more per shot to break even, but I’d be down for either.
Let kids in on the fun!
I keep reading this guy’s last name as Futanari.
The mind sees, what it most desires.
Burying the best part IMO
It’s also clear, however, that Furnari, despite no one having commissioned him to make the statue, was hoping to make money. He said he had expected unnamed wealthy figures to donate to him – he spent $100,000 on steel, resin and labor – but that has not come to pass.
In desperation, Furnari set up an online fundraising campaign, hoping to raise an initial $150,000, but potentially millions of dollars, which he said would allow him to take the statue on tour. As of Thursday, he had raised $1,400.
“I was thinking that it was going to resonate with the world, with whoever, but man, people are strange out there,” he said. “Meaning like, nobody is really coming up with support, especially financial support. So far I’ve spent all my money on this.”
Regardless of his broken foot and light wallet, Furnari said he did not really believe the Kirk statue was cursed. “The statue is not cursed. The statue is blessed,” he said, in spite of all available evidence – but he has certainly been left angry.
“Things financially are a total, absolute nightmare. It’s like wow. People are cheap, man. You know, people talk, talk – I know lots of people out there, and everybody’s so cheap. You know, like, it’s disgusting how cheap they are.”
$100K for that is insane, no matter who the subject is. I thought it was going to be cast copper or something at least. It’s just plain steel. You can buy it scrapped by the ton for like $200.
i would love to see the itemized receipt for labor
As would I.
Youre the fucking artist! What do you mean, you spent a hundred grand in labor?
basically, ‘spent’ in the headline is a complete fabrication.
Those other artists that he mentions, all did their works because someone paid them to make them. This guy did it backwards.
Yeah. The guy who made the Golden Trump statue made sure he got paid and even had to withhold shipment of the statue because the patrons were trying to skimp out on paying him.
Furnari is left with a 6ft 4in statue of a renowned racist, which he has spent $100,000 making, and which no one wants to buy. Maybe it is cursed after all.
Perfect ending to an article.
Something tells me that now that he hasn’t made millions of dollars, he doesn’t like Kirk.
Guy tried to do the right wing grift and didn’t realise you need to target the people who already don’t have much, the people who do have money for this kind of thing are the grifters who don’t fall for the scams because they run them.
‘Artist’
This man is carrying the flame. Y’all need to take notes
It’s just from Claude but it guesstimates his out of pocket expenses are around $15,000. A few grand for the materials then like another 10 for casting it. He’s probably made the wax cast himself and is valuing his own time around $85,000.
Money. It was all for the money. He was hoping to sell it. That’s it.
[Risitas.gif]
I’d offer to sense for that but I discard pennies at every checkout. Gadgets not what we thought when we were kids.
