Lincoln Launch

While a senior majoring in studio art at Vassar, David Ostro ’06 got a phone call from a former employer and family friend, Bob Carr. Carr is the CEO of Heartland Payment Systems, cofounder with his wife, Jill, of the Give Something Back Foundation, and “an amateur historian.” Carr told Ostro his dream to bring to light the history of the birth of Carr’s hometown, Lockport, Illinois, “for which Abraham Lincoln was partly responsible,” Ostro says.

Lincoln, as a young state congressman, had played an important role in getting a bill passed to build a canal connecting Lake Michigan to the Mississippi — a canal that “would transform the entire state of Illinois,” not to mention the town of Lockport, home to the canal’s first lock. “Bob had seen some of my artwork,” Ostro says, and “he asked me to build him a monument of Lincoln that would sew together the history of his hometown.” Ostro told Carr that he was “obscenely underqualified” for the commission, “lacking experience in figurative sculpture and bronze casting” — but Carr persisted. “I didn't know what to say,” Ostro says. “So I said yes.”

The statue, which represents two and half years of research, planning, and sculpting, was cast at the Tallix Foundry in Beacon, New York. It was unveiled in Lockport on February 12, 2009, in honor of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. The unveiling was part of the dedication of Lincoln Landing, a new interpretive park in the town. The sculpture sits on the original site of the canal’s wall, and represents the young congressman in three poses: dipping his hand into the water, standing up, striding off purposefully — a man of thought and action. Ostro’s hope, he says, is “that it would not only bring his personality to life, but also the heavy, frozen bronze as well.”

Ostro harbors fond memories of producing art under the guidance of faculty and peers at Vassar. He particularly misses the biweekly art critiques — “a time when Gina Ruggeri, George Rush, Richard Bosman, Laura Newman, Peter Charlap, and Harry Roseman felt less like teachers and more like fun-loving aunts and uncles,” he says. Ostro now lives in Brooklyn. He is available, he adds, for new commissions.

— Sarah E. Brown ’09 

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