Document details

Valerie Edwards, Director of Sculpture and Chief Sculptor at Walt Disney Imagineering
Dan Heaton

When we think about our favorite attractions, it’s easy to just consider the concept designers. That’s just the first step to bring those ideas to life. It takes sculptors and other artists to create the places and attractions we enjoy. A perfect example is Valerie Edwards, who worked as the Director of Sculpture and Chief Sculptor at Walt Disney Imagineering for more than 20 years. She learned from the masters and developed her skills to meet changing technology during her time at Disney.

Valerie is [Dan's] guest on this episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast to talk about her background and career. Her father, George Edwards, worked as an animator at Disney on films like Sleeping Beauty. This exposure to various types of art as a child helped to inspire Valerie’s path. She first worked at Alchemy II for Ken Forsse, a former Imagineer who also created Teddy Ruxpin. Afterwards, she started at the model shop at WDI in 1988 and became the successor to the legendary Blaine Gibson.

Valerie and [Dan] talk about the important relationships that shaped her time at Disney and beyond. She developed a close friendship with Disney Legend John Hench and visited Gibson to receive his blessing and guidance. We also discuss challenging projects like sculpting President Obama for the Hall of Presidents in 2009 plus Johnny Depp and Barbossa for Pirates of the Caribbean. Valerie describes how technology for sculpting has evolved to make such remarkable work possible. […]

Player

The media player embeds third party contents from YouTube, Vimeo, the Internet Archive and various other sites into this page. If you choose to use this feature, the site serving the content will register your request without you explicitly accessing it. Please check our Privacy policy for more information.

Clicking the button on the right you will activate the mediaplayer until you close your browser. The setting is saved in your browser using a cookie.

Persons

Source

Title
Source type Podcast
Volume 132
Published
Language en
Document type Interview
Media type audio

Metadata

Id 5846
Availability Free
Inserted 2021-02-23