By Ben McCarthy
William Nemitoff is exhausted.
His art may be what pays the bills, but the journey to get his creations to where they need to go is where the real work begins.
Will, as he prefers to be called, is back at home in New Orleans. He’s road weary from a series of drives between Louisiana and Kansas City.
The 2009 graduate of Blue Valley North spoke to the Telegraph on Tuesday after just returning from his latest trip to where he grew up: Leawood, KS.
The graduate of Tulane University has made the Big Easy his home since leaving here 15 years ago, but he made the trip back to where he spent his formative years in order to deliver his first commissioned art installation in the metro area.
Nemitoff was selected two years ago by the city of Leawood to create a sculpture marking the city’s 75 year anniversary (2023). He credits his mom, Leslie, with helping him learn of the opportunity to create the sculpture. When he read the public announcement, he had a good feeling that he had a real shot at being chosen.
“When cities tend to put out requests, it’s usually for an artist’s prior work and qualifications,” Nemitoff said. “This was a request for a proposal based on ideas. That gave me the level footing I needed to compete with people who had been doing this much longer.”
He began work on a massive creation, titled “Reaching,” at his studio in New Orleans: Curious Form. The studio began in 2018, and gained publicity in 2020 when he manufactured 10,000 custom face shields and distributed them around the country for free. The sculpture he would be delivering to Leawood would grow to 27 feet tall and 40 feet wide, thus requiring multiple trips to bring it to Kansas.
“I had to do three separate trips,” Nemitoff said. “Each trip involved two full days of driving both ways.”
The 850-mile trip from Cajun country to Johnson County took 16 hours each way. The trek is usually about 13 for most drivers, but towing the sculpture meant highly cautious driving with a challenging, oversized load.
“It was incredibly stressful, especially when passing another oversized load,” Nemitoff said. “There was nowhere to park this custom trailer I built, so I would just drive until I couldn’t anymore and then I would just pull over and sleep right there in the truck.“
On Tuesday evening, the Telegraph spoke with Nolan Beaver at the installation site. Beaver, also from New Orleans, was in town this week to oversee more electrical work on the lights being completed. The finished sculpture will feature programmable lights, which city officials can control from their office. Beaver says the display should be fully functioning by July 4th, and expects City Officials to have a patriotic light display happening that week. Beaver serves as the Lighting Designer for D.N.E. Productions in New Orleans and is working for Nemitoff on the project. Beaver, who got involved with the project about a year ago, echoed Nemitoff’s feeling that the finished product has turned out exactly as planned.
In April, the city approved final funding for the project: almost a half million dollars toward installation (including landscaping, electrical work and the concrete pad) costs of the sculpture. Adding in the cost of an adjacent parking lot, it will bring the site costs to almost $650,000. That’s on top of the $200,000 paid to Nemitoff for the work on the sculpture. The city is planning a dedication ceremony on Thursday, September 26th.
Melissa Duggan, Cultural Arts Supervisor for the Leawood Arts Council, is thrilled that the installation work came together last week as it did, and sees the sculpture as a great way to “announce” the city to drivers on I-435 as they make their way from Missouri to Kansas, and vice versa.
“It’s been a long process and it’s a joy to finally see it,” Duggan said. “Just the engineering aspects of it alone are impressive – we look forward to seeing it light up every night.” After eight days of installation work (including getting all of the lights attached), the 15,000 pound work is finally home and Nemitoff is sensing an end to the three year process. He plans to return to town in late September and be a part of the dedication ceremony, but for now is trying to enjoy seeing his initial concept come to life in a place that has so many memories.
“It’s surreal to be doing this work in my home city.”
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$850,000 ?
It sure is easy to spend the tax payer’s monies … these dollars could have been spent a little more wisely!