2,800 Tons Of Sand And Soil Create Giant Portrait On National Mall

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2,800 Tons Of Sand And Soil Create Giant Portrait On National Mall

Matt Cohen in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 1, 2014 2:00 pm

Right now, there's a giant six-acre portrait of a boy's face on the National Mall. But you wouldn't be able to make it out even if you're standing in the middle of it. You can only see it from the top of the Washington Monument. Or from an airplane. Or from your computer.

The giant landscape portrait, called "Out of Many, One," was created by artist Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada as part of a collaboration between The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the National Park Service. If the name of the piece sounds vaguely familiar—it should—it's the english translation of "E pluribus unum," which can be found on the U.S. Seal.

Standing atop the Washington Monument looking at it, it's an impressively detailed portrait of an anonymous boy's face. The face, Rodríguez-Gerada tells DCist, isn't of one person, but rather "a composite of different people from all over the world." As the title of the piece suggests, it's meant to represent the diversity of U.S. culture.
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The piece will be available to the public from October 4 to October 31, at which point NPS will begin to fill the area back in with grass. For those who can't make it up the Monument, or aren't flying over the mural, it's viewable online via EarthCam’s new live streaming webcam, which was embedded into the Washington Monument looking over the mural, which you can view right now.