FROM 2007
BLAINE GIBSON
talks about sculpting "Partners" and "American Adventure"

by Scott Wolf

If I had to choose one word to describe Blaine Gibson I'd have to say, "humble." He does not need to be. He is a mega talent. He sculpted for Pirates of the Caribbean, It's a Small World, The American Adventure, and even the iconic "Partners" statue of Walt holding Mickey Mouse's hand that appears in front of the castles at Disneyland and Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.

But, before Blaine sculpted for Disney he was an accomplished animator on many of Disney's classic films. He enjoyed working as a team with others and felt that everybody equally deserved the credit for the finished product.

It is such a pleasure to be able to share my Blaine Gibson interviews with you.

Scott Wolf: I just love your sculpture of “Partners” in the Disney parks.

Blaine Gibson: That was something I did when I was in Sedona. Sedona is a great place to work. It’s very easy to find assistance and help. I had a wonderful assistant to help me on the various statues. I did other statues that weren’t even for Disney. I mean eight foot statues. I did all of that there.

For Walt Disney, I did his head and his body because I had a young assistant. My brother was head of the art department at Northern Arizona University and I said, “Will you please have your sculpture professor tell me which of his students is the best?” I didn’t want the worst, I wanted the best. Sure enough, he recommended the one that I got who was now no longer in school but was heading a foundry (an establishment for producing castings in molten metal) in Sedona.

I came out to see my brother often so I just went down to Sedona and checked out this young man. At that time I wanted to see if I could lure him to California to be my assistant. I was still in California then. But he said, “I just got married and my wife has a job.” She’s a farm girl and he didn’t know if she’d ever want to live in town. She inherited a cattle ranch in Montana and my assistant finally went up there and he’s been there ever since.

But, he was a talented young man and very good at taking orders and doing what I asked, and so he helped me with the Walt statue, because that’s a lot of clay to put up. A lot of heavy things that have to be done, and here I was a guy already in my 80s, so it was great to have this guy help me.

SW: How did you come to do the statue?

BG: Marty Sklar (of Walt Disney Imagineering), a good friend of mine and a wonderful guy, would call me up and ask would I want to do this or that.

The first statue I did was a congressman in Texas named Sam Rayburn. And Sam Rayburn was a famous congressman because he had been Speaker of the House longer than any other single congressman.

I always read as much as I can about anybody before I start on them. Of course, I knew Walt so that wasn’t in my own opinion too hard for me to get my idea of what Walt would look like.

But this Sam Rayburn, Marty called me and he said, “Blaine, would you be interested in doing a statue?” I said, “Well, if I can get the help in Sedona.” And this was the same young man I was talking about, because I was now in Sedona.

I had a nice studio in my own house and it was really pretty nice. So I checked with him the next day and he said sure so I called Marty back and said, “Yes, I can do it. What’s this all about?” He said Perry Bass, whose family now owns most of Disney, wanted to know who in the world he could get to do the statue of Sam Rayburn to be put in front of his museum in Bonham, Texas.

He said they wanted an eight foot statue, which is a little large for that. His building is not a large building, but I did what they wanted. I felt it was kind of nice because I really thought the guy was amazing after reading a couple of books about him.

So I proceeded to do it, and they sent out guys from Texas, and Sam Rayburn was a good friend of Perry Bass and the Bass family which owned the Disney Studio at that time. So he saw my work at the studio and Marty said, “Blaine, the guy likes your work and he’d like you to do the job.” So I did do it, and it’s there and that’s what they wanted.

So that was not a Disney job, but it shows you how things can amplify sometime.

SW: And when you did the Walt statue, was that done for Disneyland?

BG: It was done to be put in front of Disneyland, and as the parks developed we added one to Tokyo, and we added one to Paris, and we added one to Walt Disney World. Remember, Walt Disney World was not finished until 1971 and it started as you know with the Magic Kingdom, which is wonderful. Different than what Walt imagined or dreamed of. Nobody could ever do what he wanted on Epcot. But, it was a beginning for what became our next big theme park which was Epcot. That was finished in 1982. That was really almost my last association with Marty and Walt Disney Imagineering. I don’t think it was quite my last, but I think it was pretty close.

SW: What did you work on for Epcot?

BG: I had a big, big job on Epcot. We had all of the characters in all of the shows. One of the largest ones and one of the most taxing ones was “American Adventure.” It was my job to design and take care of the characters for the major shows for that. In that would be Will Rogers who later turned out to be not a major character because on a survey they discovered that Will Rogers was not known to too many people, so he became just in one scene. At one time he was considered to be one of the narrators. It ended up we chose Ben Franklin and Mark Twain (pictured, Blaine's sculpture of Mark Twain for American Adventure.

So those had to be done and I had to do design and do the sculpting. The small bodies for the models for the sculptor and then the (full size) heads just to get the character. It was a fun project. Then we had a lot of incidental characters. If you go to that show you’ll be amazed at how many three dimensional characters there are in that. So we had to do all of those. All fun.  

More from Blaine:
How he got his start with Disney in 1939
His move to Imagineering and Disneyland on opening day
Disneyland and Great Moments with Mister Lincoln
Pirates of the Caribbean - Creating the classic attraction
Sculpting for "Mary Poppins" and theme parks such as Epcot

See other interviews