Sleep was not an option for Todd Garfield '00 and Matt Dickman '00, who abandoned rest until 3 am Wednesday night to complete a 1920s-style car in the center of the Green.
Due to lack of student interest, the sculpture is not quite as majestic as the two sculpture committee co-chairs had hoped it would be.
Garfield -- who was the sole sculpture chair until he asked Dickman to help him with the work -- decided on a car because it seemed like "the best and the most do-able" option. The car was originally supposed to rear up on a slanted road, but warm weather and a disinterested student body forced him to change the design. Instead, the car is laying flat, and it is "not quite as grand as I had hoped," Garfield said.
In order to create the car, the sculptors packed snow into surrounding wood boards. They then hosed down the snow so it could freeze overnight, and raised the boards to create additional tiers.
They had initially planned to have a three-tier base, and to sculpt the car out of two additional tiers on top of the base.
But due to slow construction, on Sunday, they decided to carve the car out of the first three tiers, making it about half the size Garfield planned for.
"We just realized that with all the carving and how much needed to be done, it just wasn't going to happen," Garfield said.
Although the committee put up posters and sent several blitzmail messages to athletic teams, campus groups, UGA groups and Greek houses, "This year everyone was just kind of apathetic toward the sculpture," Garfield said. "There were a couple of good days ... But besides that, it was pretty weak."
Last year, a few Greek houses along with a lot of UGA groups and athletic teams assisted with the construction. A few fraternities and sororities helped again this year, but other organizations and groups promised to help but did not show up, Garfield said.
"A lot of groups we used to count on in the past just weren't interested this year," he added.
According to Dickman, the only athletic team that helped was the freshman ultimate frisbee team.
"We were definitely expecting a stronger showing from the freshman class," Dickman said.
Seniors who did not want to miss their last opportunity to work on a sculpture were among the students who did help, Dickman said.
The co-chairs said there were four or five days during the past five weeks when a lot of students joined the effort -- but there have been many more when it has been just the two of them and a couple of others.
Garfield tried to count the hours he spent in the middle of the Green, but "the number was depressing me, so I stopped," he said.
But as the ultimate deadline approached, more students started to come through. About 20 students helped on Wednesday night.
"A ton of people finally came out," Garfield said. "We had a good '01 turn-out, finally, on the last night.
Garfield said it ultimately may have been a positive thing that few people helped until the last night, because a five-tiered sculpture would not have survived the rainy weather.
But the rain did prevent them from sculpting mobsters hanging out of the windows, since water would have made the mobsters collapse.
"We planned for warmth, but not for rain with this design, so the weather still got us," Garfield said.
The sculptors made a last minute decision to spice up the car by adding working headlights to it.
"We figured, if worse comes to worse, the lights will still be pretty cool," Garfield said.
A flapper or a mobster were among the ideas the committee considered for the sculpture.
They thought the mobster might look grim, and worried that a flapper might not look good if the proportions did not work out as planned, Garfield said.
Preventing a repeat of last year's collapse the day before Carnival began was another reason the committee opted for a solid car sculpture.
