Houghton's The Miner
The Miner (1979) is a bronze statue by Elizabeth Biesiot in the city of Houghton, Michigan (Smithsonian Art Inventory, 2015). It is dedicated to the miners that gave birth to the city through their hard work in the copper mines. Its body is of bronze and its base is of stone: the Miner, in mid-stride, is perched upon stones, which indicate the foundational nature of the subject. The statue appeals to one's sense of place, time and history all at once, and the more one stands in front of it and soaks in the surrounding environment, the more one feels grateful to the men who are represented by this statue.
In a way, it does the same thing that the Vietnam Memorial does: it evokes a sensitive subject and makes it real -- and in doing so also pays tribute to the men and women who gave their lives. In this sense, the Miner does what a good work of art should do: it elevates the mind and gets it thinking about more than just the representation in front of it. For instance, when one pauses long enough to consider what the Miner stands for, one sees more than just a man going to work in a hole. One sees the wife who is waiting for him at home, and the children he is working to feed. One wonders about the domestic situation: how many were happy, how many were lonely, how many had strong families. One remembers the disaster of the collapsed mine in Chile a few years ago and wonders whether the families of these miners ever feared that their husbands or fathers or brothers might not come back alive.
One also sees the importance of the labor that these men provided for the city, which honors them today with this memorial. The memorial itself is made of copper -- the same metal that these men went into the earth to find. So there is a touching tribute in the choice of metals used in its construction -- a gesture that says, "Thanks for making this possible."
The statue itself is one that...
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