THE MODELER AND THE MODELED
Michael Chesko describes himself as an eccentric mix of engineer, model maker, unofficial cartographer, and most of all, artist. When he was a little boy living in Arizona he would make maps of fictitious landscapes of places like Arizona and then he started to model cities. He would literally fill a room in their home with a scale model city.
Chesko is an eccentric. He sees skyscrapers almost as living things which continue to mold the people who frequent the buildings’ neighborhoods.
In 2008 Michael Chesko unveiled his miniature replica of midtown Manhattan. He used balsa, wood, xacto blades, and fingernail files to create the miniature midtown Manhattan. He based his miniature using a scale of 3/8” equals 100 feet. He hand-carved each piece of the city using blueprints, photographs, digital reproductions, and satellite images. It took Chesko 2000 hours to complete this replica.
Project Midtown Manhattan Photograph
They say that if his model of Midtown Manhattan were full-sized it would be within 5’ of the actual building modeled. (James Woodman, downtown express, Volume 21, Number 8, The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan, July 4 – July 10, 2008)
Businesses like Hobby Lobby have aisles in their stores dedicated to modelers. Serious modelers may create elaborate model train layouts or miniature solar systems. When I Googled "modelers" I was immediately taken to the Modeler’s Annual Magazine website where I saw extraordinary scale model replicas of an abandoned caboose, a dilapidated brick building, a rusty 1957 Chevy hardtop, an outhouse and an antique Fordson Tractor project. (FineScaleRR.com/)
There are as many kinds of models are there are modeling interests. Every model is a reflection of the one who modeled it. And it is noteworthy that God reveals himself in Scripture as a modeler as well.
God is a Modeler, we [people]are being modeled.
(From a sermon by Monty Newton, The Modeler and the Modeled, 1/19/2010)