*** NEWEST W.L. THING ***

Souvenir Travel Plate in Lucas Kansas

Substrate installed August 14, 2006, painting from September 4th throught November 8th

That’s right, in addition to being the Grassroots Art Capital of Kansas, this tiny town of 400 now boasts its very own World’s Largest Thing! Honoring the multiple Outsider Art environments that have flourished in Lucas since the early 1900s, the World’s Largest Souvenir Travel Plates depict those environments alongside a visual history of the town. A full explanation of the iconography can be found in the Handy Dandy Guide to the World's Largest Souvenir Travel Plate page.

The dish itself is 14’ in diameter, formed from a large fiberglass satellite dish with another, smaller dish mounted inside as the center medallion. Lots of local help went into realizing the project, with the City of Lucas crew providing labor, cement, and engineering expertise and the local telephone company providing one of their decommissioned communications dishes. Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the large travel plate was painted during September, October, and a little bit of November 2006 on-site, alongside state highway K-18.

The on-site painting proved to be an additional, bonus community-builder, as numerous tourists and townsfolk stopped by to see what was being added in the day’s paint scheme. With the dish placed just across the highway from the local Café, numerous tie-ins are possible. Travel plate specials? Place-mat info sheets? Possibilities abound with a World’s Largest Thing – what will YOU build?

Online photo blog of daily painting progress, as well as running count of Stoppers, Honkers, and Hooters can be found on the World's Largest Things Flickr page.

Souvenir Travel Plate Stats

Thank you, City of Lucas crew, Lucas Arts and Humanities Council, Wilson Telephone, and National Endowment for the Arts!

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