







It was year 1991 when Mark Cline, an American artist, was busy building life sized dinosaurs outside the Enchanted Castle Studios in Virginia. Around that time, a shabbily dressed guy drove to the site in a pickup truck. He asked Cline how much money the life sized dinosaurs would cost since his brother-in-law expressed interest in buying them. Mark thought the guy was crazy and quoted a sky high figure to get rid of him. Only a couple of weeks later, his brother-in-law, billionaire George Barber bought seven of Cline’s life sized dinosaurs as lawn ornaments.

Cline assisted with the installation of the life sized dinosaurs in Barber’s lawn which was located in Alabama and spanned 10,000 acres. When Cline returned to Virginia, he received yet another call from someone in Alabama. Apparently, his work was far from over at that point.

The man on the phone stated that George Barber had heard Cline mention on TV that he put glass eyes in some of his life sized dinosaurs. It turned out that Barber wanted the same treatment for all his newly-acquired dinosaurs. As a result, Cline had to fly back to Alabama to fulfill the request whereby travel and the artwork were fairly compensated ofcourse.

Interestingly, Cline had not even had a single meeting with Barber himself during the course of this work. Infact, he only met him about ten years later whereby Barber commissioned Cline to build artworks called, Bamahenge and Lady in the Lake. Both of these artworks along with four life sized dinosaurs had been featured at Barber Marina.

The T. Rex, Brontosaurus, Triceratops and Stegosaurus are life sized dinosaurs that stand across the marina entrance road; yet, they are tough to notice. It is certainly interesting to see how life sized dinosaurs created a bond of friendship between an artist and a billionaire who seemed cut off from the world for a while.









Like this post? Consider following us on Twitter and Facebook.

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

