Born
in 1945 in Washington D. C., James Sanborn would spend his childhood in
Alexandria, Virginia, attending JEB Stuart High School in Fairfax. His
career began to take shape as he studied archaeology at Oxford University
and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in paleontology, fine arts, and social
anthropology from Randolph-Macon College in 1968. In 1971 he
earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn. He was a teacher at Montgomery College in Rockville
and at Glen Echo Park.Sanborn is famous for his work with American stone in abstract art that demonstrates the hidden forces of nature and a sense of mystery. His most popular piece, Kryptos, was dedicated at the CIA Headquarters courtyard in 1990. He is well known for works installed all over the world, including All the Ships Sailed in Circles at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, The Cryllic Projector at the University of North Carolina, Coastline at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration in Maryland, Antipodes at Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D. C., Wealth of Nations at Cleveland State University, and Binary Systems at the Central Computing Facility Internal Revenue Service in West Virginia. These are among his more than 125 and counting sculptures implemented the world over since the early 1970's.
"The Wizard of Codes," is the title William Webster, former Chairman of the CIA's Cryptographic Center, gave Ed Scheidt, the man responsible for teaching Sanborn encryption methods that would eventually be used in Kryptos. Scheidt, a quiet professorial individual fond of hieroglyphic patterns, spent four months devising the type of cryptogram Sanborn would implement.
"I could use methods to encrypt [the sculpture] that had a historic basis, that didn't compromise any current methods [of cryptography used by the government]... I wanted to make something that could eventually be deciphered or extracted rather than something that will never be done, ever," Scheidt comments. He figured that the first parts of the puzzle would take a few years to solve and the last part -- maybe ten.
The remaining undeciphered passage has eluded code-breakers for a decade and a half. Its solution has been attempted by the CIA and the National Security Agency with no progress. Sanborn believes that the ultimate secret hidden within the text of Kryptos will never be deciphered.
Sanborn wrote the plain text enciphered during a four-day journey to Arizona where he picked up a large piece of petrified tree used in the sculpture. "Kryptos speaks of a sense of place," Webster told Sanborn, "You have captured much of what this Agency is about."
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> Intimation: Letter to
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The Washington Post: Cracking the Code of a CIA Sculpture
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/july99/kryptos19.htm
International High IQ Society: Puzzles
http://www.highiqsociety.org/common/puzzles/puzzle02.htm
Elonka's Kryptos Page: Artist/Sculptor James Sanborn
http://elonka.com/kryptos/sanborn.html