The Great Room at the Internet Archive was formerly a church nave, and so it’s appropriate that a golden afternoon light glows through its arched windows. On a recent Tuesday, Nuala Creed sits in a pew and contemplates the 175 three-foot-tall ceramic sculptures she has crafted over the past 15 years.
All of the figures represent employees, past and present, of the Internet Archive, a free database and digital library started to catalog books, web pages and “the Internet itself.”
A figure in the front row sets a mournful tone: It’s the sculpture of Aaron Swartz, a computer programmer and activist for a free and open internet who worked as a developer at the Internet Archive before he died by suicide in January 2013 at his Brooklyn apartment. He was being prosecuted for allegedly downloading millions of academic articles from JSTOR.
Today, “people come here to be photographed with Aaron,” Creed said.
Other sculptures at the archive, at 300 Funston Ave. in the Richmond, are more anonymous: Any employee who works at the Internet Archive for more than three years is eligible to be cast in clay.
The sculptures are the brainchild of Brewster Kahle, the founder of Internet Archive, which was started in 1996 and has an archive of billions of web pages and millions of books. Its most famous tool, the Wayback Machine, lets users look back through a website’s history.
Kahle came up with the idea of making sculptures of employees. “Most of our lives are what we work on,” he said. “Let’s make sure that it is a positive experience, and people feel celebrated in doing it.”
Each sculpture is a snapshot of an individual, suggesting their personalities and interests.
“What would you like to hold that you feel would represent you?” Creed asks everyone before picking up the clay.
Some people have simple requests: A cup of coffee, some flowers, or a favorite book. Others have more elaborate ideas, Creed said.
Someone asked to hold a scale of justice. Another wanted to hold two books, “On Bullshit” and “On Truth” by American philosopher Harry Frankfurt. An employee who usually serves people food at events holds a hot dog. Swartz holds a laptop.
Jason, an employee based in New York, asked Creed if she could give him a pair of ceramic wings. When Creed declined because it would throw off the balance of the sculpture, Jason found a pair of black feather wings, much like ones from a child’s Halloween outfit. His sculpture today wears wings and a top hat, and carries several floppy disks.
Creed was hesitant when Kahle came to her to commission the project in 2008. “Absolutely not. You have too many people who work for you,” she remembered saying. But Kahle persisted, asking her every few months.
“I was afraid that I may not have enough time for my own other work,” says Creed, who does political and environmental sculptures. “And also just that it would be a total disaster.”
But Creed decided to give it a try in the summer of 2009, and the first one she made was of Kahle. He was on vacation that summer, and if this sculpture failed, Creed thought, he wouldn’t even have to see it.
Kahle loved the sculpture, and it still stands in the front row at the Grand Room. He’s holding a notebook and a mouse. “I want you to make 10 more, and we’ll see where we go from there,” he told Creed. Today, it has grown into an army of sculptures totaling 175. The project is still going.
Creed, 71, took her first clay class 40 years ago. Her dad had just died and she was grieving. She walked by a clay studio in Brookline, Massachusetts, and asked if she could take a class. After a couple of years, she decided that sculpting was what she wanted to do, and she went to California College of the Arts at the age of 40.
Kahle leads a tour of the Internet Archive every Friday, and the sculptures at the Great Room are a must-stop. “I asked people if they think it’s cool or creepy,” he said. “People are really moving towards ‘cool.’”
“Yes, it is odd, and a little weird, and a little scary,” Creed said, but once people spend more time with the sculptures, they usually change their minds. One of the attendees of an event, at first, was really annoyed with “the presence.” When the event was over, she decided to stay and look at each one.
“In the end, she really liked it. She got the meaning of the project,” Creed said.
Most complaints come about when Creed can’t get the likeliness quite right. “I have more hair than you give me,” one employee told her.
When making the sculptures, Creed asks people to send photos: Their front, their back, both sides and a close-up of the face. She sets up mirrors around her workstation to look at the sculpture from all sides.
Studying people’s faces closely and making their favored objects, whether it’s a bottle of beer or their family cat, gives her an opportunity to build a connection to people she doesn’t know.
“Sometimes, when I make them, I feel like I’m getting to know them,” she said. “I’m just a stranger, but I’m getting to know the person.”
One of her subjects even asked to put his ashes into the sculpture. He told Creed to mark his date of birth, and leave room for the date of death.
In the beginning, Creed made about one or two a month. Now, she’s making fewer; in 2024, she made about eight to 10. “Aren’t you bored?” people ask her. “I’m not. Each one is different, and each person has a different story.”
Hoping you can provide a link for signing up for tours
More stories like this! Thank you!
Very cool. Thanks for the article.