The Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Department of Buildings and General Services invite the public to visit the current exhibit of outdoor sculpture in the Council's Sculpture Garden.
The garden is located at the Council offices at 134-136 State Street in Montpelier, next door to the Capitol Region Visitors Center.
This year's exhibit features work by artists who have previously exhibited in Woodstock, VT's SculptureFest, including Anne Dean, Herb Ferris, Joe Hallowell, Barbara Kaufman, Lindsey Molyneux, Pat Musick, and Kevin Wiberg.
The Sculpture Garden is a public/private collaboration that features rotating two year exhibits of contemporary sculpture created by Vermont artists. Designed in 2002 by Burlington landscape architects H. Keith Wagner and Associates, it offers a place to picnic or just for quiet reflection in Montpelier's downtown, and is fully accessible.
The 2007-2009 Sculpture Garden Exhibit was curated by Lindsey Harty of the Vermont Arts Council and painter Charlet Davenport, a former Council board member and annual organizer of ScultpureFest.
Special thanks to State Buildings Curator David Schütz, and his assistant Tracy Martin, for their ongoing dedication to bringing art into the downtown Capitol complex.
Artists in the current exhibit are featured below. Click here to view past exhibits.
Herb Ferris: "Hanging Stone", pictured at left, features a piece of wood and river stone.
The wood in this piece is wood laminate in the shape of a pod forming ribs, with the riverstones hanging as a pendant in the middle.
Herb works in wood, steel and stone, and his work has been used in private and public gardens. His sculptures fall roughly into three groups: intimate space pieces in stone and wood, large pieces that reflect and invoke the landscape features of mountains and bodies of water and smaller pieces in stone as fountains or still water basins.
The wood has been treated with a variety of preservatives including boron implants. The pieces are joined with pins and epoxies. Many of the stone pieces are made with schist and beach granite.
Pat Musick: "Luminaria" and "The Path"
"Luminaria", pictured at left, is a large cast bronze sculpture about 8 feet tall. It mimics a driftwood look.
Pat is new to Vermont, previously from Arkansas. Her work is shown all over the country in permanent and temporary installations.
"The Path", pictured at right, features a series of three low metal tables that are oriented to the ground, with a circular pile of pebbles in the center of each table.
Says Pat, "My art is a reflection of the tensions that exist between mankind and the natural environment. It addresses the havoc that we have done to the natural world andthe devastation that the natural world has wreaked upon mankind. I search for ways to create harmony and reconciliation of this situation both in the media and the content. Stone and wood speak for the physical world while rusted steel addresses human abuse of the environment. Through my work these conditions come together in a conversation of peace and spiritual quiet creating a reconciliation. In today's world so many of us cry out for such a healing."
"Column", pictured at right, is a beautiful organic pillar with varied texture and color that is enhanced by its natural surrounding.
A resident of Woodstock, Barbara is a ceramic artist that has work in collections across the nation and whose career has spanned decades. Her large outdoor ceramic sculpture withstands the winter weather well. Currently her art has referenced the female form with allusions to various cultures and at times more natural forms.
In her studio in Woodstock, Vt., Barbara Stroock Kaufman ’40 is ever busy making art. It’s her source of energy, she says; “I just fall apart if I’m not doing it.”
Her sculptures—many of which “live” in gardens or function as fountains or bird baths—are so popular that Kaufman sometimes has trouble collecting enough of them for an exhibit. Commissioned works have appeared in gallery shows throughout New England and Canada and have traveled coast to coast; her sculptures have also been on view at the Cincinnati and Philadelphia Museums of Art.
Kaufman’s “basic training” in art came from Harry Wickey [Skidmore College] who taught her first to sketch and then to sculpt (he himself went on to become curator of the reknowned Storm King Art Museum).
Source: Skidmore College website
"Arab", pictured at left, is a driftwood piece created by Lindsey Molyneux. Lindsey is an artist from South Royalton, who has transformed her love of horses into an elegant body of work. She works using found driftwood to create representational works depicting horses.
Lindsey's passion for both art and horses was evident from childhood, from her early sketches in the gravel driveway to the life-size mare that appeared painted on her bedroom wall one day. Before Lindsey had her first pony, she actually built jumps in the yard and ran over the courses herself.
She embarked on a lifelong journey of creativity and invention that has produced sculpture as unique and amazing as she is. Lindsey currently lives and works on a farm in South Royalton, Vermont, collecting many of her supplies during mid-summer raft rides down the White River.
"Interloper", pictured at left, consists of two saplings painted black and white with ceramic birds perched on the branches. His works is ephemeral and stunning in a natural context.
Kevin is a resident of Huntington and works with found natural materials and ceramics.
"Eating Crow", pictured at right, is an aluminum and steel sculpture of a large fork with a black crow perched upon the tines. It is a humorous and striking representation of the familiar phrase.
Joe is a native of Danville whose work ranges from whimsical to contemplative.
Says Joe, "My art is characterized by the dual themes of transformation and reality. I deal with realistically portrayed natural subjects that dwell in the realm of the unexamined....
Art is a means by which people can view the familiar, examine it, and gain new perspective."
"Bench", pictured at left, is an elegant white marble bench with smooth lines of detail.
Anne has been working in stone and metal for the last few years and has recently become President of the Board of the Carving Studio and Scultpture Center in West Rutland
"The Goldstone Memorial", pictured at left, was created in 2001 by Willard Boepple of North Bennington. It was created in honor of Boepple's friend James Goldstone. Goldstone was a resident of Shaftsbury, a director & producer of film on large silver & small television screens, a co-founder & chair of the VT Film Commission & a trustee of the VT Arts Council. He died of cancer in the fall of 1999. The Goldstone Memorial is the only permanent work in the Sculpture Garden.
“I am an abstract sculptor & I want my sculpture to speak in a language of its own invention, create a reality of its own terms. A good sculpture gives us a glimpse of the world through a fresh eye. That being said, the Goldstone sculpture “FOR JIM” came to life in my mind’s eye the way that Jim moved. I tried to get into the sculpture a sense of his gentle, lanky grace – the way he walked or stood holding a glass. Remembering Jim, that is what I saw & what I miss seeing today.”