New Installment Added to Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden

"Tide" in the sculpture garden

From Michelangelo’s David to Giacometti’s “Walking Man I,” sculpture has long paved the way for explorations of art and the human form in distinctive ways. The newest permanent installation at the Georgia Museum of Art is no exception.

“Tide” is an androgynous, life-sized, cast-iron sculpture standing right outside the entrance to the museum’s Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden. Standing nearly six feet tall and with a glass strip inlay in its left arm, the sculpture possesses no distinguishable features other than a pair of lips and a nose.   

Steinunn Þórarinsdóttir (pronounced Stay-nun Thorens-daughter) is a sculptor from Reykjavik, Iceland, who has been exhibiting her art around the world for 38 years. Þórarinsdóttir studied sculpture from 1974 to 1980 in England and Italy. She previously exhibited her sculptures at the museum in 2011 during the inauguration of the sculpture garden in a yearlong exhibition titled “Horizons.” Þórarinsdóttir came to the museum in March of 2011 to discuss her installation.

Þórarinsdóttir says of her choice to become a sculptor, “I guess partly it was due to the fact that I come from a country that is in constant flux and formation. . . . When I started to work with sculpture it just felt like I had found my home. I was suddenly in control and connected. I could transfer my thoughts and feelings into something real and physical.”

The sculpture garden exhibits only works by woman artists, with “Tide” taking the second permanent position in the garden. The other sculpture occupying the garden is “Terra Verte #1” by Patricia Leighton, a Scottish artist.

Þórarinsdóttir is particularly thrilled about her sculpture being placed in the garden, emphasizing, “The fact that the Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden focuses only on female sculptors makes it absolutely unique. Especially considering that sculpture was for a long time thought to be a section of the visual arts that was for men only!”

The sculpture was purchased with a gift from patron Judith Ellis in honor of docent Carol Dolson. Ellis has volunteered and supported the museum, served on the board for the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art and created the Judith A. Ellis Endowment for Education. Carol Dolson is an award-winning children’s book author who graduated from UGA and lives in Athens, Georgia.

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Stephanie Motter

Communications Intern

"Driving Forces: Sculpture by Lin Emery"

“Driving Forces: Sculpture by Lin Emery” is on view now through April 2, 2017. Four of Emery’s large kinetic sculptures, including "Octet," "Splay," "Lyric" and "Umbrella Tree," will be outside in the Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden, and five smaller sculptures will be inside in the Alonzo and Vallye Dudley Gallery. Included indoors is a maquette of "Tree Flowers 2" (also in the exhibition) to show visitors how Emery's works evolve from paper model to sculpture. Check out the video below to see the sculptures in motion.

An internationally recognized artist, Emery takes inspiration from the kinetic appeal of music, dance and natural forms, especially flowers and trees, to design works that move gently in response to the wind. Her main materials, polished and brushed aluminum, are the same as those used in boat building in New Orleans, where her work can be found throughout the city. Annelies Mondi, the museum’s deputy director of the museum and curator of the exhibition, came upon Emery’s work while in New Orleans. Mondi said, “It was incredible. She really is a big part of the city, and that intrigued me.” Emery was born in New York City in 1928 and studied under Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine before settling in New Orleans.

Playwright Edward Albee, who knew Emery from when they were children, compared her sculpture to that of Alexander Calder and George Rickey, both of whom also make use of movement in their work. Albee writes, however, that Emery’s “work can be confused with no one else’s; the world of kinetic art is healthy in her mind and hands.” Emery's sculptures are the latest to be featured in the Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden. Opened in 2011, the sculpture garden is devoted to the works of women sculptors. Previous exhibitions there have focused on sculpture by Alice Aycock, Patricia Leighton, Chakaia Booker and Steinunn Thorarinsdottir.

"Terra Verte" Exhibition Transforms Nature into Art

Artist Patricia Leighton grew up primed to appreciate the wonders of the natural environment, a quality highlighted in her exhibition "Terra Verte," on display in the Georgia Museum of Art's Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden until May 2015.

Her interest and attachment to the natural environment are indelibly present in her sculptures. "Terra Verte" consists of six steel-framework cubes raised above the ground and filled with plants that transmute in color and texture over time, contrasting the starkly stagnant mechanical with the vibrantly evolving natural.

Leighton explains, "Having grown up surrounded by Scottish hills and mountains of ever-changing color, texture and light; having traveled Britain and Europe viewing ancient sacred sites like the Ring of Brogar in Orkney or Hagar Qim in Malta, I have experienced first-hand a sense of timelessness and hidden mysteries. I seek to capture this sense of presence in my work and the intrinsic echoes of the landscape.”

Leighton's sculptures, which are created with a supporting team of ecologists, engineers, architects and landscape architects, have been installed around the world in places such as Scotland, England, South Korea, Bulgaria and New York City. Her husband, Del Geist, is also an artist, and his sculpture "Stone Levity" is installed in front of the Performing Arts Center in the quad during the same period that "Terra Verte" will be on display.

The Georgia Museum of Art will be hosting a lecture by Leighton on Sept. 25 entitled "Art and Place" at 5:30 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Intrinsically Radical: Chakaia Booker

    Not many artists easily use rubber in their work (except for rubber cement, in most cases). Chakaia Booker, however, has gained fame for her incredible pieces sculpted out of her go-to medium: car tires.

    On the rim of a wheel, tires don’t appeal much to the eye, if at all—as long as all four are inflated, I’m good to go. Otherwise, they’re probably the last thing on my mind, least of all for an art project. For Booker, the opposite rings true. Her imposing yet magnificent pieces exhibit a fluidity that seems almost alien, pushing at the boundaries of the real in an artistically meaningful manner—who would have thought of morphing something as crudely made as a tire into a structure that mimics the natural contours of a human spine? By using a material so out of left field in such a manner, Booker makes a name for herself not only as an artist, but as an innovator.

                                                        Phobic Digression-Chakaia Booker

    Booker’s work is in collections ranging from the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to NASA. GMOA is lucky enough to have a special exhibition of her pieces in the Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden, where they will remain until next April.

Horizons on video

Larry Forte, Daura art handler, made this video to document GMOA's installation of Steinnun Thorarinsdottir's "Horizons," which has been up since we reopened and will be leaving us soon, unfortunately. It's silent, but it shows how peaceful the garden can be when there aren't 100 children climbing all over everything.

Tonight: Film and Filmmaker Talk with Frank Cantor

Join us at GMOA this evening from 5:30 to 8 p.m. to see Frank Cantor’s film “Horizons: The Art of Steinunn Þórarinsdóttir” and an excerpt from the documentaries in the “Art of Collaboration” series featuring Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Rosenquist and Frank Stella. Cantor will speak about the films and his work with artists.

Click here for more information about "Horizons." We hope to see you tonight!

Horizons a Hit

When we decided to host Steinnun Thorarinsdottir's traveling exhibition "Horizons" in our new sculpture garden, we had no idea how popular her cast-iron figures would be in candid photographs. The above one came from Family Day, but people keep sending them to us, so we're going to create a special set on our Flickr page to showcase them. Feel free to send us your snapshots (to gmoapr@yahoo.com), and we'll put them up.