Meet Scott Wise: The Local Sculptor Behind Rinne's Bronze Statue

For the past quarter century, Clarksville native Scott Wise has immortalized some of Middle Tennessee's most significant moments and figures in beautiful bronze sculpture.

From honoring his hometown's resilience after the devastating Clarksville tornado of 1999, to memorializing Tennessee's fallen firefighters, Wise - a firefighter himself - had seemingly captured it all.

That is, until the Nashville Predators came calling with a special commission.

As a day one Preds fan, Wise accepted.

On Saturday, his latest project - a towering 12-foot-tall bronze statue of legendary franchise goaltender Pekka Rinne - will be unveiled at its permanent home on the Bridgestone Arena plaza.

Chatting over the phone on one of his days off from the fire station, Wise touched on the significance of his soon-to-be public work.

"It really is huge," Wise said. "And especially for me, but also for all of Middle Tennessee, just to have something there that you can put a face to the organization. [The Predators] have come a long way. And I hope that this helps it and builds on it."

While the physical process of sculpting Rinne's statue has been in the works for the past 12 months, the idea came to Wise years earlier.

"I started looking around Bridgestone every game I went to and noticed that there was really no artwork or sculptural things," he said. "And I thought it'd be really cool to have something, if not at Bridgestone, maybe at F&M Bank Arena."

Wise knew someone who knew someone and sent an email to the Predators detailing his ideas and offering his services.

Years later, after the winningest goaltender in franchise history announced his retirement, Wise got the special gig.

So, how do you create a larger-than-life bronze Pekka Rinne? To start, you need to capture your subject.

Unlike Wise's previous work sculpting local celebrity Frank Sutton or Montgomery County namesake John Montgomery, getting access to this sculpture's real-life subject wasn't an issue.

When Rinne returned to Nashville ahead of his jersey retirement ceremony last February, Wise made the hour-long drive to Bridgestone Arena to get started.

While modern sculptures can now be made by scanning a subject into a computer and building off the resulting 3D model, a hiccup in that plan forced Wise to do things somewhat "old school."

With Rinne back in his old Preds gear one last time, Wise pulled out his camera and started snapping photos.

"We ended up taking essentially a barber pole of photographs," Wise said. "We started at the bottom, took pictures all the way around him, and kept going all the way around him and worked all the way up to the top of his helmet and the stick. I took as many measurements as I could, and was fortunate enough to actually get his pads, gloves, blocker and stick to work with."

Rinne held the pose as Wise collected his measurements and photos, and after the final shutter took a moment to sign the sculptor's jersey.

"I was starstruck, if you will," Wise laughed. "But I had to make sure I got those measurements right, or I'd have to fly to Finland to get them again."

After snapping more than 200 photographs, Wise uploaded the best of them into a program that in turn created a rough 3D model and milled out a styrofoam "mannequin."

Wise then carved the styrofoam down to perfectly match Rinne's pose before covering it in clay and fine tuning the sculpture's more intricate details.

The trickiest of those, according to Wise, was Rinne's face.

"It can't just be a goalie or a hockey player, it has to look like Pekka," Wise said. "So I ended up taking the head off and bringing it home so I could work on him here at my house."

To get Rinne's likeness just right, Wise employed the help of his wife and stepdaughter - two equally passionate Preds fans.

"I would have them come out into the garage and say, 'What do you think?'" Wise laughed. "And as soon as I saw them look confused I'd go, 'Alright, never mind,' and go back out and work some more."

By early November, when Wise stepped back to look at his work, it was unmistakably Rinne's face staring back at him.

Wise received the greenlight from the Predators shortly thereafter and sent his clay sculpture off to a foundry to be transformed into bronze.

Although Wise - now a proud Season Ticket Citizen - has attended hundreds of Preds games over the team's 25-year history, Saturday's matinee might end up being the most important.

After all, when his 12-foot, 900-pound bronze statue of Smashville's favorite son is unveiled on the Bridgestone Arena plaza, it will represent so much more than a collection of statistics.

"He's such a humble guy, and he was probably like me, thinking I'm not deserving of this," Wise said. "But he's the face of this organization, really. My kids have grown up watching him and his community involvement. And that's really big for me. It's not only his play, and he's a great player, but it's just him being a good guy, too."

Saturday's statue unveiling ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. CT on the Bridgestone Arena plaza on the corner of Broadway and Rep. John Lewis Way. The public ceremony will include a number of speakers, including Rinne himself, Preds broadcaster Pete Weber and General Manager David Poile.

The event will also be streamed on NashvillePredators.com, BallySports.com and the Bally Sports app.

Click here for more information on the ceremony.