When McDonald’s wanted a tribute made for its quarter-pounder in 2019, the hamburger giant turned to Drew Bott.
The result was the world’s largest Quarter Pounder, an 11.5-ton behemoth created by Utah artist Raymond Gibby sitting on a pedestal of Wyoming granite made by Bott Monument of Riverton, which was mostly in the cemetery headstones business at the time.
“They sent me a picture and it was ridiculous,” Bott said. “Their only instructions were that they wanted to put it at a place where people eat a lot of hamburgers.”
The giant bronze hamburger now sits in Rapid City, South Dakota, on the way to Mount Rushmore, and is popular with tourists. It is 8 feet wide, 5 feet tall and sits on about 1,800 pounds of granite.
McDonald’s discovered Bott because he had just created a monument for the Philadelphia Eagles after they won the 2018 Super Bowl. The Eagles were using the same public-relations firm.
“We drove out to Philly and put up this real nice monument outside the stadium that was a statue of the coach and the quarterback,” Bott recalled. "We did it the day before they opened their 2019 season."
Locally, another non-gravestone project was a stylized bench for the Riverton Junior Football League.
“A bench can be boring, but a bench shaped like a football standing on top of stainless steel letters is not boring,” Bott said. “We designed it so that the kids could sign their names on all the stainless letters when they win the Riverton Junior Football League championship, and then you can wipe them off with acetone.”
Bott’s latest project was a veterans' memorial in Glenrock that features a stainless-steel statue of detailed boots, gun and helmet that took his artist more than 600 hours to construct.
“We create the majority, if not almost all, of the veterans' memorial projects in Wyoming,” Bott said. “That's been always a pleasure.”
Bott also makes sure all his monuments are made with materials completely sourced from the U.S. He said most veterans monuments now are black and come from China or India.
“The granite for the Glenrock memorial came entirely came out of South Dakota,” Bott said. “The stainless steel came out of Illinois, the bronze came out of Utah.”
Memorial Art
As a memorial artist, Bott said he hates generic gravestones.
“We've turned, unfortunately, memorials and cemeteries into post office boxes, and I can't stand that,” Bott said. “All of us wear different clothes, different glasses, different everything, and I've never understood why we ended up treating this part of our lives as an item you would pick out of a catalog.”
So Bott said he is on a mission, one family and one grave space at a time, to give people something different in a cemetery.
“I think art has a way of bringing about some good in the world, and what better place to put it than where everybody is hurting,” he said. “My job is to create things that somebody can't think of and get it to the point where somebody will smile over it. And if it's fun, that’s even better.
“My job is to create a piece of art that represents what somebody was and celebrates them. We are acknowledging that the loved one passed away.”
He said his memorial business exists for those looking for a unique art piece to remember loved one.
His latest piece is a 16-inch globe that features every continent and is perfectly tilted on the axis to rotate. As you walk by, Bott said, it can be spun. The monument is curved like a wave.
“It is for a family that never had any kids and worked in Dubai their whole life,” Bott said. “They wanted something to show that they were world travelers.”
Fifth Generation
The family tradition of working in stone started 151 years ago, when Bott’s great-great grandfather apprenticed on the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.
“We don't really know what portions of it he worked on,” Bott said. “We know he was somebody who used the hammer and chisel.”
Bott’s family ended up in Ogden, Utah, in 1875 and has been on the same corner there since 1893. He is the fifth generation to work in stone – although that was never his plan.
Bott trained to work for the Drug Enforcement Agency and only agreed to work in the family business for managerial experience.
Twenty-one years later, he is still working in stone. He is as adamant as ever that he hates working on headstones.
“About 12 years ago is when we steered it in this much more fun and unique direction,” Bott said. “We have just turned our monument business into an art studio and that has been what I have loved.”
Bott travels all over the United States delivering his monuments and says he now only does about 65 grave art pieces a year.
“People call us primarily because they want it to make the cover of a magazine, and they need it to be something that stands out because their person stood out,” Bott said. “They are all personalized that way.”
Helping Families Heal
Bott said that many years ago he told a grieving mother that his goal was that she would want to go to the cemetery.
“I remember she said at the time, I thought, this guy's crazy,” Bott said. “She came back later and said, 'You know, I actually do.'”
Bott said the woman was never able to touch her son because he spent his entire brief life in the incubator. Instead, she sat outside his little incubator for the few days he was alive and would play a small snow globe that played Pachelbel's "Canon in D."
“She would sit and twist it and wind it and play it and twist it and wind it and play it,” Bott said. “So at the graveside, we made a stainless steel music box that plays Pachelbel's Canon in D, so anybody can come and wind it.”
Bott then gave her an additional 20 units so that she could replace the music whenever it wore out.
“She should have 50 years of Pachelbel's Canon to be playing out there,” Bott said.
Bott said he gets his inspiration for these unique works by visiting with the grieving families.
“I like just asking really weird questions to get them to think outside of a box,” Bott said. “And if it can be funny, let's make it funny.”
He just completed a memorial for a young man who died in a motorcycle accident that features a real motorcycle wheel. Bott mounted it in a cutout so people can spin the wheel. It has a real gold chain and gold sprockets the family wanted to represent their lost loved one.
“If every cemetery were an art gallery, I really think we would think about that experience much differently than we do,” Bott said. “A cemetery literally means a remembering place.”
As Bott prepares for his next project, he's determined that it is just as fun and meaningful as designing the world’s largest Quarter Pounder or a Super Bowl statue.
Contact Jackie Dorothy at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
