THE ROCK (a tribute to America, our soldiers and vets)

11.30.05 | Ray "Bubba" Sorensen (artist), Candy & family

[Mia T]

THE ROCK

I'm told that there is a huge rock near a gravel pit on Hwy. 25 in rural Iowa. For generations kids have painted slogans, names, and obscenities on this rock, changing its character many times. A few months back the rock received its latest paint job and since then it has been left completely undisturbed. It's quite an impressive sight. Be sure to scroll down and check out the multiple photos (all angles) of the rock.  I thought the flag was draped over the rock, but it's not. It's actually painted on the rock too.

 

 

Here's the artist Ray "Bubba" Sorensen

AWESOME Work, RAY...Thank you!
God Bless America, Our Soldiers & Vets

thanx to Cobra64 & wife for finding this

[nutmeg]

WOW, this is awesome, Mia! Thanks for this thread and for posting the pics. I'll ping some FRiends here...

[Prime Choice]

Explain Senator Tom Harkin

If I could do that, I'd bottle it and sell it.

[nutmeg]

Gotta see this ping!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.

[nutmeg]

Gotta see this ping!

[Brian Allen]

Thanks, Mia.

There's one of those great rocks south of Bellingham, Washington, on the travelling-north side of I-5.

Dunno what it's saying at the mo - [I'm in the far-abroad] - but it has from time-to-time also been covered with some moving tributes to those of our military the malicious Murtha Mob malignantly malign.

[NautiNurse]

Beautiful!

[DollyCali]

(from Snopes) - a bit more info

Origins: We can't recall an occasion since the brief lifetime of the infamous Malibu Canyon "Pink Lady" nearly four decades ago that a painted rock drew as much attention as the one pictured above.

The object captured in the images displayed above is a 12-foot-high, 56-ton rock which stands alongside Highway 25 in Iowa, about a mile south of the town of Greenfield exit from Interstate 80. For years it featured nothing but graffiti scrawled upon its face by a host of itinerant youngsters — until 1999, when a young man who had grown up in Greenfield was inspired by the film Saving Private Ryan to make better use of the natural canvas.

Ray "Bubba" Sorensen II, now a Des Moines resident who works as an ad/web designer, was a 19-year-old Iowa State University student who had seen the Greenfield rock many times before when, around Memorial Day in 1999, he decided to begin what has become an ongoing artistic tribute to America's veterans: It was right around Memorial Day, and I was driving by that rock and wondered what it would be like if I actually took the time to go out there and paint it. And so I painted it with the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. I got such a huge response that I kept painting it. I've been painting it for the last five years with tributes to veterans on Memorial Day.

Each year around Memorial Day, Ray uses white paint to cover over his previous year's work, then spends one to three weeks creating new scenes on his blank canvas. The photographs shown above capture the 2003-04 version of the famous Iowa rock, which featured scenes depicting Washington's crossing of the Delaware, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and America's response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, interspersed with quotes from presidents Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, and George W. Bush, all capped by renderings of draped American and POW/MIA flags.

Only once in the six years he has been painting the rock has his work been defaced, Ray told an American Forces Press Service reporter: his 60th anniversary tribute to veterans of the Pearl Harbor attack painted in 2001 was vandalized a few weeks after it was completed, but the perpetrator "got a punch in the face from a Vietnam War veteran for his trouble," and his work has remained undisturbed ever since.

Biographical information about Ray Sorensen and pictures of his past work can be viewed on the Sorensen Crew web site.

http://bubbazartwork.com/

[kassie]

Thanks for the ping Dolly. Amazing.

[Peach]

Some kids "get it"; great pictures.

[an amused spectator]

I give it 4 hours before lurking democrats read this and go trash it.

Maybe a day or two - they'll have to thoroughly search it for information they can give to the enemy BEFORE they trash it...

[newgeezer]

I'm pretty sure that's not the latest paint job on the rock. I seem to recall seeing what I thought were newer pictures a few months ago; the newest paint job no longer has the neat illusion of the flag draped over the top of it.

[Mia T]

You're right.

THE FREEDOM ROCK 1999-2005

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

I am fortunate enough to know Bubba and drive by "The Rock" frequently. He paints a new scene each May in time for Memorial Day.

One year someone defaced the painting. A good, patriotic Viet Nam vet found the perp, punched him in the face. It cost John some money but the rock has not been defaced since and that was a few years ago.

[Conservativegreatgrandma]

Actually, The Rock is only about a mile south of I-80. It is now lighted with an American flag and POW flag flying beside it.

How about an Iowa Freeper event there? There's an area across the road that might be able to be used for a gathering. There isn't room beside The Rock but there would be across the road.

[Wolverine]

bump

[Mia T]

thx :)