Ryan Cormier

The News Journal

When Business Insider wrote about University of Delaware graduate student Jim Dessicino's statue of Edward Snowden appearing in New York's Union Square Park earlier this month, the reporter noted that none of the dozen passersby they talked to could identify who the statue depicted.

For Dessicino, a 29-year-old Atlantic City, New Jersey, native, it could have been a blow to his confidence as an artist, having spent months creating the 9-foot, 220-pound figure out of gypsum cement, clay, steel and foam.

But just hours earlier when he was unloading the statue from a van to bring it to the Manhattan park, he heard a man on the bustling New York streets shout, "Oh my God! Is that Edward Snowden?"

In a stroke of pure coincidence that is still hard to believe, that man happened to be with journalist/activist/blogger Glenn Greenwald, whose reporting last year in Britain's The Guardian first disclosed the secret U.S. surveillance programs using leaked documents from Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor.

The person most closely associated with Snowden, now living in Russia, just happened to be having breakfast with fellow journalist Jeremy Scahill at Coffee Shop restaurant when Dessicino's van pulled up and the super-sized Snowden popped out.

"I thought, 'You have to be kidding me.' I wasn't convinced it was him, but then I walked up to him and it was Glenn Greenwald," Dessicino says. "And [Greenwald] was more confused than I was about all of this. He was dumbfounded, but really excited and happy to see it."

After the chance meeting, Scahill took a photo of Greenwald with the statue and posted it to Twitter, writing, "So, @ggreenwald & I were having breakfast & a truck pulls up with a statue of Edward Snowden."

Greenwald, who lives in Brazil and was visiting New York to attend the premiere of the documentary "Citizenfour" at Lincoln Center that night, soon retweeted it.

The result was a hectic few hours for Dessicino, whose statue is currently greeting museum-goers at the entrance of the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (200 S. Madison St., Wilmington) through Jan. 4. (The statue even has its own Twitter account: @EdSnowdenStatue.)

Reporters from publications like the New York Daily News, Vice and Buzzfeed descended on Union Square to report on the statue. As Dessicino did one interview after another, representatives from the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation soon arrived and told Dessicino he had to remove the statue since he didn't have a proper permit.

He had brought it there as part of the Art in Odd Places festival, which ran Oct. 9-12 in New York. It lasted three hours before authorities had Dessicino haul Snowden away.

Dessicino, a sculpture student in his final year of studies at University of Delaware, especially got a kick out of the lead paragraph of the Daily News'

Daily News reporter Caitlin Nolan wrote, "Edward Snowden, while still welcome in Red Square, got the boot Friday from Union Square."report, which followed one of its trademark headlines, "Edward Snowden statue forced to defect from New York City's Union Square."

Dessicino, who specializes in making topical sculptures and statues tied to current events, decided to make the statue in June after the first reports of the surveillance program were published simultaneously in The Guardian and The Washington Post.

He was captivated by Snowden's video in which he identified himself as the leaker of the classified information, revealing himself to be a 29-year-old North Carolina native who worked for the United States government.

"I knew I wanted to do it the day I saw the video," Dessicino says. "He was one year older than me and doing what I didn't think was possible: Telling the world something important and sacrificing his freedoms in order to do it.

"He seemed like the most pivotal figure of my generation. I was truly inspired. I knew it was big and important."

Dessicino began work on the Snowden statue three months later, spending months creating the hulking faux Snowden and completing it in March. Its first public appearance came at UD's Botanic Gardens on South Campus off South College Avenue a month later.

Even though Dessicino agrees with Snowden's actions to leak the classified information, he says the statue is more critical of the government's snooping than in praise of Snowden. The statue, for instance, does not have a plaque or any description of what it depicts.

"If it was in praise of him, he would be in a pose more demanding of praise. He is in a very uncertain position with hands in his pockets, looking down," he says. "It's a very un-monumental monument. Even the materiality of it – it's not bronze or marble. It's just really hard gypsum cement that is used for casting metal."

Part of the reason why he picked that material was because it was cheap, but also because it is really hard.

In the past, he's had artwork vandalized or destroyed in public and he knew his Snowden statue could be a target for vandals who believe Snowden is a traitor to his country – someone deserving of prison time instead of being memorialized by a monument.

"The last piece I had in public was abstract and there was no reason for anybody to attack it and they still attacked it three times. I knew this was controversial so I wanted to make sure nobody would get hurt if they did decide to attack it," Dessicino says.

Dessicino will speak about his work at a DCCA opening reception Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m. as part of the city's monthly Art Loop. The reception runs from 5-9 p.m. and will also mark the openings of solo exhibitions by Dan Jackson and Hiro Sakaguchi.

Maiza Hixson, curator at the DCCA, agreed to house the statue even before its splashy New York City debut. David Meyer, an associate professor at the University of Delaware's Department of Art, first told her about Dessicino's project and showed her an image of it on his phone.

"I immediately grasped that we needed to bring that to the DCCA as soon as possible," she says. "The DCCA has an obligation to provide artists with a platform for controversial statements and artworks that make people think about the world that we are living in."

The statue arrived at DCCA on Oct. 13, just days after its New York adventure. So far, the museum has not received any complaints from visitors, Hixson says.

After its run at DCCA, Dessicino plans on Snowden finding a new home to be seen by the public, whether it be another museum, university or national park.

But no matter where it ends up, it will be hard to top the statue's first few months in the public eye.

"I'm still totally shocked," says Dessicino, who adds that a former WikiLeaks employee told him that Snowden himself has heard about the statue.

Dessicino says an interview with Moscow-based Russian television station NTV about his statue is currently in the works. One day, he hopes he can shake Snowden's hand.

"I don't know if we would have all that much in common to talk about other than civil liberties," he says. "I don't know what kind of art he likes, what kind of music he listens to or whether he drinks beer."

IF YOU GO

University of Delaware graduate student Jim Dessicino's statue of Edward Snowden is at the entrance of the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (200 S. Madison St., Wilmington) through Jan. 4. Dessicino will speak at an opening reception Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m. as part of the city's monthly Art Loop. The reception runs from 5-9 p.m. and will also mark the openings of exhibitions by Dan Jackson ("Manufactured") and Hiro Sakaguchi ("Avert, Escape, or Cope With")