Muhammad Ali Sculpture by Michael Kalish

L. A. artist Michael Kalish has created an amazing and intricate tribute to the Greatest Of All Time, Mr. Muhammad Alli. For this portrait of three-time heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, the artist Michael Kalish uses 1,300 punching bags, 6.5 miles of stainless steel cable, and 2,500 pounds of aluminum pipe to construct a 22-foot-high installation that took three years to complete.

The idea for the project came to Kalish as he was falling asleep one night in 2008: an array of custom-made, teardrop-shaped speed bags suspended in midair that, from just one vantage point, align themselves like pixels into an image of Ali’s face. But the LA-based artist, best known for crafting portraits of American icons out of license plates and other found objects—he counts Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger among his collectors—knew he couldn’t construct such a large-scale installation on his own. So he retained architectural firm Oyler Wu to design the structure in which the bags are suspended. (At the unveiling ceremony, Ali will hang the final bag.)