September Issue 2001
National Sculpture Show Opens at Brookgreen Gardens
For the second year, Brookgreen Gardens, in Pawleys Island, SC, is hosting the National Sculpture Society Annual Awards Exhibition from Sept. 1 through Oct. 28 in the Rainey Sculpture Pavilion. It's one of the most important sculpture events in this country.
Sixty-five works by sculptors around the world will be showcased in the 68th annual juried exhibit before moving to New York from Nov. 5 through Jan. 25, 2002.
The exhibition opens Sept. 1, following completion of judging. A talk on The Sculpture Connection will take place at 1pm, featuring Gwen Pier, executive director of the National Sculpture Society (NSS), and Robin Salmon, Brookgreen's Curator of Sculpture. From 2 to 4:30pm, visitors are invited to mingle with visiting sculptors in the gallery where they'll also be signing their books and catalogs.
The sculpture, which is all representational, not abstract, is in eight different media - bronze, stainless steel, terra cotta, resin, plaster, fiberglass, stone and wood.
Subject matters of the eclectic exhibition range from the mundane - a beetle, a nurse in uniform, a terra cotta turtle with an entire city on his back - to the ethereal: Nina Akamu's Dogma I, a dog with angel wings; or Victor Issa's Divine Encounter, and a Madonna and child tableau. There are female figures, animals, portraits, male figures, fantasy figures and fragments (heads, busts, etc.).
The pieces in the show were chosen from 400 photographs of sculpture by accomplished artists as well as up-and-coming students. The sculptors themselves are an eclectic group who hail from Pennsylvania, Vermont, California, New York, Florida, Colorado, even France and Afghanistan. Virginia is the only Southern state represented in the show.
Awards Juror, William Behrends, of Tryon, NC, is the sculptor whose Strom Thurmond Monument, including a larger-than-life-size bronze figure, which was placed on the grounds of the SC Statehouse in Columbia, SC. The other jurors are Daniel Altshuler, also a professional sculptor, from Gloucester, MA, and Kevin Tucker, curator at the Columbia Museum of Art.
"What is especially exciting is that this exhibition, though juried, is open to any sculptor working in the representational realm," said Robin Salmon, Curator of Sculpture at Brookgreen. "This means the works of internationally known sculptors, such as Glenna Goodacre, Stanley Bleifeld and Nina Akamu, are shown alongside creations of younger, less experienced artists, even students."
Goodacre is the artist who created The Vietnam Women's Memorial which stands in the nation's capitol. Her sculpture of several young children raising and saluting the flag, Pledge Allegiance, is on display at Brookgreen outside the Welcome Center.
Bleifeld is most known for his work on the US Navy Memorial in Washington, DC -- The Lone Sailor and The Liberty Hound, two over-life-size figures, The Homecoming, a life-size group, and The Silent Service, a bas-relief, all grouped around the memorial.
Akamu, whose family was held with other Japanese-Americans at an internment camp during World War II, has received the important public commission of a memorial to Japanese-Americans to be installed in the nation's capitol.
The relationship between Brookgreen Gardens and the NSS goes back to the founding of Brookgreen. Archer Huntington was a major patron of the Society, and Anna Hyatt Huntington was one of its earliest members.
Brookgreen Gardens is one of only 12 institutions in the country accredited by both the American Association of Museums and the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. Brookgreen Gardens has recently been named one of five top gardens in the Southeast.
Brookgreen Gardens is one of the largest collections of outdoor sculpture in America. This preeminent collection of American representational sculpture includes - 560 works by 240 artists - representing such well-known artists as Charles Parks, Daniel Chester French, Carl Milles, August Saint-Gaudens and Anna Hyatt Huntington.
For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings or call 843/235-6000 or visit their web site at (http://www.brookgreen.org).
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