The Rocket Slide
Designed with the intent to energize children's enthusiasm about rocketry and space travel, the Roswell Rocket Slide didn't disappoint.
From the installation in 1956 to its retirement in 2018… The Roswell Rocket slide proved to bring over 60 years of laughter, joy, sentiment and memories of launching into the sky that will live on forever.
The slide's declining condition and safety code violations led to its decommissioning in 2018, making the decision to swap out the slide for a more modern one.
The city stepped up and made a concerted effort to revitalize the tired slide in a way that would satisfy everyone. The city banded together and worked hard to find a new use for it.
Enter in, New Mexico artist, Josh Berry and 2 years to Restore and Resurrect the Slide into a Monument on Main Street.
0perati0n Resurrect R0cket
“Since they can’t slide down it anymore, maybe they can take their kids to it. And see it, and enjoy it, and reminisce, and take pictures and selfies and what have you,”- Josh Berry
READY T0 LAUNCH
New Mexico is pleased to announce Josh Berry’s debut solo reveal in Roswell New Mexico. Opening on July 5, 2024, featuring a restored cherished relic of timeless memories and future reminiscing.
The Roswell Rocket interprets the legend of rocketry that has inspired Patrons from Roswell and all across the globe. The Remodeled Rocket Sculpture is in response to a bold dream of the artist and locals to maintain and further the memories of their youth and propel the honor of their bliss for ages to come.
The New and Improved Rocket
The rocket has mostly remained unchanged, with its red, white, and blue hues. However, it has also received enhancements.
For instance, it has bigger wings, a scale model of a rocket engine positioned at the bottom, and LED lighting. It’s also roughly eight feet taller.
Further exploring space and rocketry themes , the Roswell Rocket (2024) stands proud at 33’ with its vibrant back-lit gold, in contrast with the dark hues of metallic blue and rocket red.
Berry’s monument conveys poetic responses to legend, history, and the industrial world, evoking themes of space, rocketry, and imaginary play.
His work is united by the artist’s combination of the luminosity of red, blue and metallic gold with the visual and symbolic resonance of other mediums including steel and led back-lighting.
Berry contrasts the materials’ varying tonalities to impart the sublimity of childhood and the weight of history.
THE ROSWELL ROCKET (2024) is a sculpture Reminiscent of the works of Robert H. Goddard, Father of Rocketry, native to Roswell where major advancements for NASA and the world took place.
This work’s striking statement on main street reflects Berry’s artistic approach to restoration.
The Title
THE ROSWELL ROCKET is titled after the rocket slide from Spring river ZOO formerly known as Peppermint park that served as a 6 decade plus memorandum of 100’s of thousands of children's imaginations and sentiments, a guardian of childhood maintaining the vital essence of the young soul.
The Symb0lizm
In addition to suggesting the connotations of space travel, the Restored Rocket symbolizes resurrection, a new life transcending finality and the forgotten. Its Understood as evoking delicate memoirs from the atomic Age, with the love of space travel that was widespread.
BERRY INCORPORATES LARGER THAN LIFE FEATURES
With integrated reclaimed steel, metallic hues, subtle details of copper and forged metal, juxtaposing steel, paint and light creating motifs of transcendence. The sculpture housed in its own Main Street park contains rebuilt poles, re-welded levels, the original platforms coated in gold lighted overlapped with red and metallic blue laser cut coverings allowing the brilliant light to ray through the portals.
Visit the R0swell NM Site
Berry’s exhibition THE ROSWELL ROCKET (2024) is on view at Mainstreet Plaza, Roswell New Mexico, from Infinity to beyond.
Resurrecting a Community and Historical Icon