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A couple hours after arriving in Lincoln, the 800-pound clay sculpture constructed over a steel framework was standing inside the Jayne Snyder Trail Center in Union Plaza, which is serving as a temporary studio for Victor through Tuesday.

“He’s still not finished,� Victor said Wednesday. “There’s still a long way to go in the detailing until I’m ready to say, ‘make the mold and go to bronze.’"

The public is invited to the trail center from 1 to 4 p.m. each day through Tuesday to talk with Victor and watch him work on the sculpture, made of oil-based clay, using his hands and a set of small wooden tools.

“Hooks, loops -- it’s the same clay tools Bernini was using,� Victor said, referring to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the famed 17th century Roman sculptor. “There are calipers, too. And he would have used paddles made of wood. I’ve got this (a pliable plastic paddle), it goes around curves more easily.�

Victor has been working on the statue for about five months, since receiving the commission from the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs and Lincoln native Donald Campbell, whose foundation provided the sculpture as a gift.

Former Sheldon Museum of Art director and now Flatwater Folk Art Museum director George Neubert discovered Victor for the Standing Bear project a couple of years ago when the artist was making “The Victor,� a sculpture of a football player in vintage gear that now stands outside the stadium at Peru State College.

But Victor already had established himself as one of the nation’s leading figurative sculptors, who is helping to lead a renaissance for the sometimes-scorned form.

Since about 1950, Victor said, figurative sculpture “lost the aesthetic in favor of subject matter,� leading, to put it bluntly, a host of bad statuary.

The aesthetic, both in its accurate representation of the figure and its intent beyond mere replication, has, thanks to Victor and others, begun to return -- in pieces and within the art world.

“I think the acceptance is coming back,� Victor said. “The figure can be a work of art. It can impart a concept.�

At 26, Victor became the youngest artist ever to have a sculpture in the National Statuary Hall, when his sculpture of Native activist Sarah Winnemucca was installed in the U.S. Capitol. Nine years later, he became the only living artist to have two works in the hall.

“Standing Bear ought to be in the U.S. Capitol in the Hall of Statuary,� Victor said. “I can’t believe he’s such an unsung hero. Hopefully, this is a step toward the unsung part dropping.�

Victor’s sculpture finds the figure with his right arm extended, palm upward -- a direct connection to Standing Bear’s most famous, still evocative statement from the trial: “This hand is not the color of yours, but if I prick it, the blood will flow, and I shall feel pain, the blood is the same color as yours. God made me, and I am a man.�

Working from photographs of Standing Bear and of period clothing and earrings, Victor designed the sculpture, starting with a pair of maquettes that are on display in the trail center.

Victor's intent in designing and building the piece is not simply to recreate Standing Bear large scale but to present qualities he embodied.

“It’s a very complex thing to work on as an artist,� he said. “His courage is what I really want to convey and that determination that he wasn’t going to quit.�

At 11 feet from the bottom of the base to the tip of the feather on the figure’s head, the Standing Bear sculpture is, intentionally, the same height as “Standing Lincoln,� the sculpture of Abraham Lincoln that stands on the west side of the Capitol.

That sculpture, dedicated in 1912, is by Daniel Chester French, one of the great figurative sculptors who went on to design the statue inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

“To see the Lincoln here and think about how this will relate to the Lincoln is real important,� Victor said, admitting that working in the shadow of the master is a bit daunting, setting the bar high for his work.

Wednesday, Victor will put the Standing Bear statue back on the trailer and haul it back to Boise, where he is an artist-in-residence and professor of practice at Boise State University.

When the clay sculpture is completed, it will be covered in a rubber mold. From that mold, a wax replica will be cast. That wax piece will be covered in a ceramic shell, into which molten bronze is poured, burning out the wax.

The bronze will be cast in parts -- the right arm will be cast separately -- then welded together and the surface worked to create a patina. The completed sculpture likely will weigh between 1,500 and 1,800 pounds.

Victor has about five months to finish the piece. The Standing Bear sculpture is slated to be placed on Centennial Mall between P and Q streets in September.