LEA MAINES
DALLAS, TEXAS
Love Extended
Maines, 2011
16.5 feet tall, corten steel with 1300 lb. limestone carved base
Photo by Bob Stickney (www.stickneyphotography.com)
Lea Maines was born in 1953 in Stuttgart Germany of US citizens. She has a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Design and Economic Evaluation from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Lea moved to Dallas Texas in 1980 where she continues to work for a local defense contractor. Lea completed her MtF a gender transition in 2006 and still maintains her current job.
While some transgender persons often choose to leave their workplace, family/friends, and relocate during or upon transition, Lea stayed with her current employer and worked through the complex issues surrounding her change. Lea recalls with a smile, “You know you’re going to have a successful transition when your transition is the topic of a PowerPoint presentation!”
Outside of work, to help manage the multitude of personal changes, Lea studied and specialized in NLP (Nero Linguistic Programming), the study of language as it relates to life’s experiences. Lea is a NLP Master Practitioner, Life Coach, and continues these activities today. She enjoys helping other people make the necessary changes to experience a richer life.
Lea is a diverse person with many varied creative skills. She enjoys stone cutting, wood working, furniture design, metal working, and (of course) sculpting. She has been welding since she was a teenager working in some of the fabrications shops around Boulder and Denver. Her skills as an engineer become essential in the design and fabrication of larger scale sculptures.
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The design of the most recent sculpture “Love Extended” required the necessary engineering calculations to determine material deflections due to the massive 1300 pound Texas Lime stone sphere which sits atop the extended Corten steel form.
Corten is a weathering steel that surface rusts but maintains its underlying strength. Welds must be of similar characteristics to maintain the same surface appearance and not rust out faster than the base metal. The Corten steel structure weighs 1328 pounds.
As the mass increases from small sculptures to larger ones, material movement and handling becomes an issue. Center of mass can be calculated to determine how to best pick up, roll over, and move the sculpture in a safe manor. This then becomes project management and scheduling for time, material, and man power or (woman power:).
