TRENTON – Marilyn is here!

A crowd of two dozen people cheered when the head, torso and skirt of the "Forever Marilyn" sculpture pulled into the Grounds for Sculpture just after 10 a.m. today, the culmination of a 3,000-mile journey from Palm Springs, Calif.

Art fans, Grounds for Sculpture employees and nearby business owners all crowded around the head and torso of the sculpture, taking pictures and posing with their arms draped around the neck of Marilyn Monroe, depicted in her iconic pose from "The Seven Year Itch."

The sculpture will be the centerpiece of the Grounds for Sculpture's retrospective exhibit on sculptor Seward Johnson, who founded the park in 1992, opening on May 4.

A group of Johnson's other sculptures was placed nearby with signs reading "Hurrah Welcome" and "We thought you'd never get here."

It was one of the favorite trips for Ron Shaw, the truck driver who not only hauled "Forever Marilyn" from Palm Springs to Hamilton but drove it to Palm Springs from its original home in Chicago two years ago.

Along the way, the sculpture made stops in Phoenix, Chicago and Pittsburgh, including a visit to a truck wash where employees hand-washed the statue.

"It makes you perk up a bit when you see these kinds of crowds. It's one of the better parts of the job," Shaw said.

The sculpture weighs about 16,000 pounds, with a 20,000-pound base, and is designed to withstand winds of up to 150 mph, The Sculpture Foundation executive director Charles Haude said.

“The upper portion is all aluminum, very light, but the legs – from the waist down – are all stainless steel, to support the rest of it,” Haude said. “We’ll build armatures inside to hold up the skin and casting.”

There are 16 life-size versions of the sculpture, Haude said, which were scanned and carved out by machines.

But everything else is still created by hand, with artists taking extra care of the smaller details, such as Monroe’s cheekbones or the waves in her hair.

“There’s a lot of hand finishing to get the exact details,” Haude said. “Whenever you enlarge something like this, any little thing can be accentuated.”

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