Arts & Entertainment
Meet the Husband-Wife Team Who Make Monuments to Sports Heroes in Chicago, Around the World
A commission of Michael Jordan by Studio Rotblatt Amrany. The 15-foot sculpture, titled “The Spirit,” stands inside the United Center. (Courtesy of the United Center)
A local husband-and-wife team leads a collective of artists who create monuments to sports stars and heroes of all kinds — from Ty Cobb to Johnny Cash.
The couple makes them on property that was once part of Fort Sheridan, the historic U.S. Army training camp 28 miles north of Chicago’s Loop. One former camp building is now occupied by Studio Rotblatt Amrany.
The studio was founded by Julie Rotblatt Amrany and Omri Amrany, sculptors who have worked together since the 1980s.
Their big break came 30 years ago when the Chicago Bulls commissioned them to make a monument to Michael Jordan. The 15-foot sculpture stands inside the United Center near Gate 4. Titled “The Spirit,” it features MJ frozen in bronze, a fully formed figure soaring over abstracted opponents.
Since then, the commissions have never stopped.
The studio and its 15 to 20 artists also made the sculptures outside the United Center on Madison Street, where Chicago Blackhawks legends Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull are captured in action.
Sculptures of Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull at the United Center in Chicago. (Courtesy of Studio Rotblatt Amrany)
Elsewhere in Chicago, the studio created the tribute to George Halas in bronze and granite at Soldier Field and the recently installed tribute to Ryne Sandberg at Wrigley Field. Also at Wrigley: Harry Caray, Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and more. Sox Park is ornamented by sculptures of, among others, Minnie Minoso, Frank Thomas and Carlton Fisk.
And it’s not just sports superstars. Astronaut James Lovell is immortalized at the Adler Planetarium on Chicago’s Museum Campus, and an ambitious suite of works remembers U.S. soldiers at Veterans Memorial Park in Munster, Indiana.
Travel farther afield and find the studio’s Jackie Chan sculpture in Shanghai, China. Napoleon Dynamite — complete with “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt — is frozen in bronze at Fox Studios in LA, and a tribute to Roberto Clemente stands tall in the Bronx.
The list goes on.
The studio’s recent project was the creation of a sculpture to memorialize Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi.
Studio Rotblatt Amrany is family-owned and operated. Rotblatt Amrany is from Illinois, while Amrany grew up on a kibbutz in Israel. They met in Italy while learning to sculpt in the workshops of Pietrasanta, where Michelangelo lived and worked.
Julie Rotblatt Amrany and Omri Amrany at their studio. (Marc Vitali / WTTW News)
WTTW News spoke with Rotblatt Amrany and Amrany about the process of creating cultural touchstones.
WTTW News: How do you and your team approach a project?
Omri Amrany: I came to this country to observe, learn, explore and contribute. And I do it with the people around us. We let them develop, and when they mature and become masters, we hand out projects and they sign their name on the project and develop their own career. Basically, most of my time I focus on getting the projects and marketing for the common good of the entire artist group.
And if it’s Jackie Chan or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or working on the Kobe Bryant project, you’re working with family members, and you work with them to get what they’re looking for.
Julie Rotblatt Amrany: Our son, Itamar, worked with Vanessa Bryant on getting the right positioning for Kobe and Gigi. The people commissioning the project have an agenda, so you don’t necessarily have the freedom to do exactly what you want. They might have a photo that they really love. They bring their own needs to you, so you as an artist have to acquiesce to what they want. It’s not like I’m going into my studio and I’m creating from my subconscious and letting that flow. You’re working from hundreds of photos, because sculptures are three dimensions. It has to work from all angles.
And you have to constantly be moving around the piece or turning it or getting distance from it, because if you’re too close all the time, you can’t see if something is out of proportion or not. You have to stand way back and look at it, and even get away from it for a day in order to have a new look at it. Something you stare at so long, you can’t even be objective about it.
Work inside Studio Rotblatt Amrany. (Marc Vitali / WTTW News)
Is your job easier if the subject is still alive?
Rotblatt Amrany: If they’re alive, you have the option to photograph them and measure them, so that would be the preference. Otherwise, if it’s a sports figure from today, there’s lot of references you can acquire. But if it’s people from the turn of the century, photography wasn’t used as much as it is now, so you have less references available. It’s preferable to have them still alive and available. It’s good to meet them. You get the essence. You feel their spirit. There’s a dialogue in that way.
You mentioned your latest work, a memorial to Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi. The project was completed on a tight deadline. Take us through that.
Amrany: When we got the call from the Lakers to sculpt Kobe and Gigi, we had less than four months to do a project that can normally take a year.
Rotblatt Amrany: And that includes the designing, the casting, everything. We never have done that.
Amrany: We gathered all the artists in the studio, and we laid out for them the significance and importance if we commit to the project. There’s no way back. On Aug. 2 it had to be unveiled. They gave their body and soul and time, including the foundry.
Rotblatt Amrany: We divided up the bodies and the heads. I was working on a portrait. Omri was doing the overall gesture of the bodies.
Amrany: It got to the point where we drove the piece ourselves from Chicago to LA at the last moment. We arrived there the day before, installed the piece and were ready for the unveiling.
Sculpture of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi. (Courtesy of Studio Rotblatt Amrany)
You currently have seven projects in progress and 15 in the planning stages. What else is on your wish list?
Amrany: We’re gearing up to prepare for the LA Olympics of 2028. All across LA we already have over 25 pieces. I’m hoping to do at least 10 more around sports and culture for the Olympics by 2028. We’re constantly negotiating and working on projects. You have to think ahead and prepare for that.
In every monument, you’re dealing with a piece of metal that will last forever on-site. But you cannot take Michael Jordan and continue the flight. He’s stuck there, but you have to give the elements, the motions, the twists, all together with the elimination of gravity. It’s a form of art that analyzes information and time.
