In April, Garland Weeks’ Ground Boss was dedicated in Joplin, MO. Ground Boss is a life-size depiction of the miners who worked in the Tri-State Mining District, an area that encompasses roughly 2,500 square miles in southeast Kansas, southwest Missouri, and northeast Oklahoma. The sculpture’s name refers to a boss on the ground floor of a mine. The statue is about six feet tall and shows a miner in time-specific garments. A box of dynamite is behind him, and the miner looks as if he’s about to climb the gravel hill. The bronze sculpture was commissioned and donated by the Robertson family for the Joplin Rotary Sculpture Garden in Mercy Park.