On the (fictional) occasion of the 104th anniversary of the Overlook Hotel’s 4th of July party, I present my piece inspired by the classic film The Shining: Just Follow Along to Get to the Party
Footage from The Shining, 1980
I’ve had a long relationship with The Shining. I almost watched it for the first time at my 13th birthday party β which happened to fall on a Friday the 13th. But at the last minute, my mom learned that it contained brief nudity, so it was therefore inappropriate for children (of course gore, violence, and psychological terror aren’t an issue for American youth). We instead watched a slasher like Nightmare on Elm Street, or something. I can’t actually recall when I saw The Shining for the first time, but I’ve since seen it numerous times and it’s one of my all-time favorite films.
One day I happened upon Adam Savage’s scale model build (from ten years ago) of the maze from The Shining. Even though I’ve never been into building perfect scale models (aside from the sculpture I made of My Parent’s House) Adam inspired me to make my own version of this famous maze.
His maze was intended to be an exact replica of the model that’s seen in the film (1:48 scale). That size was much too large for my space, so I decided to make a 1:119 scale reproduction. This extremely specific size was determined by my materials: I used green kitchen scrubbing pads for the hedge walls, and those were 8mm thick. Sourcing images from the film and from Adam’s video, I redrew the layout, did some basic math, and the model ended up being about 60 Γ 40 Γ 10 cm (23.6 Γ 15.75 Γ 4 in).
This piece is neither a precise replica (like Adam made) nor traditional fan art. It doesn’t depict a specific scene or attempt to faithfully recreate the film’s snowy version of the maze. My piece began with the exact blueprint and features exact design details, but it then changes into something else.
One major deviation from the film is that the maze is full of people. While The Shining never shows more than two people in the maze at any point, mine has more than 500. They are all walking, single file, as directly as they can to an epic party in the center. Interestingly, the maze doesn’t have an exit β it’s just a one-way trip to the middle.
The final sculpture hangs on the wall rather than sits on a table. To me, this change in perspective gives a new way to view & think about the maze and it somehow transforms it from being a model into being its own unique piece.