When I was a little kid, back in the mid-to-late-'60s, the guy across the street made moai (Easter Island statues) by pouring concrete into fiberglass forms. These moai were about five feet tall, as nearly as I can remember. His back yard was rather tropical, and the faux moai were placed in random locations. I thought it was neat.
Are the fiberglass forms still available anywhere?
I could only find a rubber/latex mould on eBay. You might have to buy a moai from a garden centre that stocks them, and make your own cast.
Wouldn’t that be a copyright violation?
If you use them in your own garden for no financial gain?
You gain whatever you save by not buying all the heads you need. You are costing the “artist” money in what he will loose from not making all those sales to someone who will still benefit from his work.
If you like to be artistic . .
I make garden heads a different way. Mine are more eclectic, from gargoylish to abstract to Olmec to Shakespeare’s Puck.
I start with a chickenwire armature. Cover it with a simple papier-mâché made of torn newspaper and flour paste. Get the shape you want at that point, not later. If you want to thicken areas, like cheeks and ears, do it in daily steps or it will shrink and break as it dries.
When completely dry, apply a few thin layers of concrete. I use the kind in home and garden supply stores used for pouring stepping stones. Make it in small batches, as you can’t store any left overs between coats.
These are light weight decorations, and should not be placed where kids are tempted to stand on them.
Not if they look exactly like the moai on Easter Island. Slavish copying of an existing design, no matter how difficult, does not contribute creativity and is therefore not copyrightable.
And I’m sure the copyrights on the original moai have long since expired.
Too cool! Got any pix?
The SO and I were talking, and this subject came up.
I’d still like to find fibreglass moulds. She thinks the 20" ones on amazon are cute, but I say they need to be at least five feet tall. (Incidentally, the one in the link looks like the big ones my neighbour made.)
Sounds like a job for a really big 3D printer.
http://www.tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?topic=24315&forum=7
says to carve the mould out of polystyrene foam blocks.
Ahhh…So that’s how the ancients did it on Easter Island!
Gee whiz, I always thought they were built by aliens from outer space. 
ISTR you can buy them from SkyMall.
I thought of that, but I don’t trust myself as a sculptor. Might have to put an ad on Craigslist to find someone to make the foam positive, and another to find someone to make the fiberglass negative.
Perhaps that guy across the street made his own moulds when I was a kid.
Are you imagining five-foot tall figures made out of solid concrete? Because that’s going to be insanely heavy. Hollow concrete would be better, but I’d want to start with a form in wire or rebar.
Yeah, I’d want them to be insanely heavy. I’ve thought about putting a couple of feet of 4" pipe in the bottom, so that they can be secured to the ground. I’ve thought of putting a void inside, but I don’t know how to make it not float in the concrete. I haven’t decided if I’d want a complete mould, or just the front and leave the back flat.
This isn’t something I need soon (obviously, since this thread is over six years old), so I have time to think about it.
Instead of a void you include some foam in the center. Somehow integrate this with the metal poles that would make a kind of Easter Island statue popsicle that you stick in the ground.
Keep us posted, I find this concept intriguing. I don’t know how anyone can own waterfront property and not have a few of these gazing out over the ocean.
I’m not actually on the waterfront. (Good thing, too. Those guys get their yards flooded.) But wouldn’t it be funny if someone made a bunch of these things and placed them randomly around the bay? 
(Not that I would do anything illegal. But I might be able to sell one or two to the kind of people who put up yard art. 
)
snicker
I had this odd idea about a houseboat built on an ex-military self propelled barge - though it would take a bit of work and really only be good for coastal waters. [one that is perhaps 30’x100’]
Add potable water tanks, and a grey water tank, a battery bank hooked into a solar cell system. Floor the barge, build a tiny beach house at the stern of the barge [about 5 foot in to give a place to stand.] The roof of the beach house would be paved with solar panels.
At the bow of the barge, move the pilot position to the center, and house it in a 5 foot diameter 10 foot tall tiki with the window in the mouth and the back having a panel that opens made of probably fiberglass, and the bollards for hitching to the dock made of small slender Easter Island moai.
The space between the shack and the pilot house would be landscaped with raised bed gardens with trickle irrigation installed for our veggies and herbs. It would be handy if we could manage enough battery bank to putt along on high efficiency electric drive propellers, with perhaps a small generator and fuel tank to make sure we can top off the batteries in the dark.
