Artist Willie Cole grabbed his subject’s legs and ripped them off his torso. Cole then grabbed the triceps and forced the man’s arm out of his rotator cuff. The other arm was similarly removed.
Finally, Cole tore off the man’s head and hauled it, along with every dismembered body piece, into the basement elevator of Arts Fort Worth.
Each body part made its way up the Arts Fort Worth freight elevator, finally ending up in an exhibition hall lit by white lights and cream-colored walls.
Once settled there, the artist began to give new life to the 30-foot figure made from 20,000 used plastic water bottles.
Cole snapped the arms back into the shoulders, the legs back into the torso, and placed the severed head of the figure back onto the neck.
When it was completed, Arts Fort Worth and The Man Given Life Exhibition Hall hosted the sculpture’s presentation in Fort Worth.
“Thank you for choosing to bring this project to life in our community,” Mayor Matty Parker told Cole during the sculpture’s March 1 unveiling. “The inspiration you provide to our students here in Fort Worth is important.”
The project, which began in August 2023, was much more than a simple dismemberment and rebuilding. It involves hundreds of students from the Fort Worth area collecting water bottles, cleaning and stacking them, and taking photos to document the process.
The project opened their eyes not only to careers in the arts industries, but to their careers in general, said Arlene Barnett, founder of the Tarrant County Education Foundation.
“We have to find ways to engage kids,” said Barnett, who noted that a key focus of the project is talking to students about scholarships and where they are in the college application process.
Barnett wants these students to start thinking about their future, and specifically how they’re going to get there.
“Through one experience, we can open the doors to many,” Barnett said.
Cole didn’t just use the students as free labor. Sure, they pick up what most would consider trash, Barnett said, but they learn a ton of life skills and lessons along the way.
Conservation, creativity and teamwork were some of the things you learned, she said, while researching scholarship opportunities offered by TCEF.
“TCEF recognized that Dallas County was becoming more and doing more, and our kids in Tarrant County and Fort Worth were not the focus,” Parker said. “Now these fundraising efforts are transforming lives.”
Jordan Cooper, a senior at Crowley ISD’s Bill R. Johnson CTE Center, stood in the same exhibit hall a month before Cole boarded the freight elevator with his dismantled artwork. The student raised an eyebrow and stared at the sculpture.
Cooper wants to be a videographer or photographer and has already started his early career as a cameraman for his school’s football team. During the art project, Cooper took photographs of the process; his work is displayed on the gallery walls next to the sculpture.
“Photography and art are one and the same,” Cooper said. “Through photographs, I want to tell the story of how it all came together.”
One of three students who volunteered through TCEF to work with Cole during the creative process, Cooper said the project opened his eyes to the field — and the many different industries that photography is critical to.
“It teaches me how to be more professional and how to work with people who have different professions,” Cooper said.
Cooper first met Cole in the summer of 2023 when work on the water bottle sculpture began in the basement of Arts Fort Worth. On sultry August afternoons in the noisy air-conditioned basement of Arts Fort Worth, Cole stood over student volunteers like Cooper, often with a bottle of water in hand.
Cole calls himself a “perception engineer.” He encouraged students to “open their perception” and see familiar objects in a new way.
“You have to look at everything to see what it reminds you of,” Cole told the students as they worked on what was an artful recycling effort. “Anything can be anything.”
The proof of that stretches 30 feet up against a wall at Arts Fort Worth, looking down on visitors with eyes made from plastic water bottles.
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at [email protected] or @MatthewSgroi1 of X.. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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