Sculptures Rock

Human beings have long held a fascination with large objects carved from stone. Think Stonehenge. Think the Sphinx. Think the oversized heads on Easter Island.

Now think Schoodic Point.

Seven sculptors from as close as Steuben and as far away as Japan gathered at the former Navy base near Winter Harbor in the summer of 2007. They found the rockbound coast of Maine. They left behind seven pieces of public art for seven Hancock and Washington County communities.

One piece, Don Meserve’s Cleat, is actually part of the coast, attached to a ledge in the intertidal zone near the Winter Harbor town landing. Twice a day, the rising waters of Frenchman’s Bay cover the ledge and surround the base of the sculpture. Longer than a man is tall and easily viewed from land or water, the stone sentinel manages to stand out and to blend with its surroundings at the same time.

Meserve, of Round Pond, is one of three Maine artists who participated in last summer’s inaugural Schoodic International Sculpture Symposium. The symposium—a two-month intensive program in which sculptors lived on-site and created works literally from the ground up—was the brainchild of Steuben native Jesse Salisbury, 36, who was also one of the seven participating artists. Salisbury’s own massive piece of stonework, Glimpse of the Moon, now stands in front of the Steuben Public Library.

“The idea behind the symposium was to create an outdoor public art collection in a region of Maine that’s never had that in its history before,” Salisbury says. A veteran of symposia in New Zealand and Japan as well as the United States, Salisbury spent more than two years making the contacts with artists, quarries, and town officials to bring his passion for outsized stone sculpture to the area where he grew up.

“I’ve been a carver since I was a kid,” says Salisbury, who lived in Japan during his high school years and gained an appreciation for the Japanese approach to public art. “The symposium was mostly based on the model I learned in Japan. A single city would take us in, each artist-in-residence received a stipend, and the main requirement was that each piece would be installed in a public space.”

More than 100 sculptors from 43 countries applied. In addition to Salisbury and Meserve, the selection committee chose:

Roy Patterson of Gray, Maine, whose twin abstract statues, Sisters, greet patrons at the Southwest Harbor Public Library;

German sculptor Jo Kley, whose Sullivan Tower now adorns the Sullivan town green, just east of the Sullivan-Hancock bridge on U.S. Route One;

Dominika Greisgraber of Poland, whose twin-towered creation, Transitory, overlooks the Narraguagas River near the Women’s Health Resource Library in Milbridge;

Japanese artist Narihiro Uemura, whose I Want to Ride the Cloud stands on State Street in Ellsworth, near the public library; and

Ian Newbery of Sweden, whose imposing, abstract Tribute to Life seems to defy gravity at the Schoodic Education and Research Center in the Schoodic section of Acadia National Park.

The artists spent seven weeks at Schoodic Point, from late July to early September. All the raw materials came from two local quarries, in Addison and Jonesboro.

Maine granite is perhaps the state’s most enduring natural resource. In the days before steel and reinforced concrete, granite was much in demand, and quarries up and down the coast shipped stone to New York City and Washington, D.C., for use in projects ranging from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Washington Monument. Today, granite is used on a smaller scale, for facades, landscape architecture—and art. At the beginning of the 20th century, more than 150 quarries operated in Maine. Only a few remain.

“I went right to the quarry to choose my stone,” says Greisgraber, who has created sculptures in China, Vietnam, and many other countries, including her native Poland. Transitory is her first piece in the United States.

“This is a perfect spot,” Salisbury says of the former Navy base. “We’re surrounded by granite and basalt, and there’s plenty of lodging and industrial power.”

The symposium became a tourist attraction; the air filled with the sounds of power tools and the smell of rock dust. The artists and their works in progress were accessible to the public, and an information kiosk staffed by volunteers provided information on the sculptors and their work. All seven finished pieces were displayed at a closing reception in September. They were then moved to their selected locations and installed over a period of several months.

Once installed, the pieces become part of the landscape. Much of the public fascination with this kind of artwork lies in an appreciation of the logistics involved. The Druids made do with logs, floats, and a huge concentration of human labor. Today’s sculptors use trucks and modern machinery. Either way, it’s a massive undertaking. Slabs of stone are cut from their natural surroundings, moved to the symposium location, and then shaped by the sculptors into something as close to permanent as any form of human expression can be. As the pieces near completion, the tools in the artists’ hands become smaller. They begin with compressors and power saws; they hone their works with hand chisels and sandpaper.

Working with the individual communities was both a challenge and a reward, Salisbury says. Local committees appointed by town selectmen were closely involved in the process of selecting the sculptors and the pieces they would sponsor. Greisgraber’s piece in Milbridge was partially underwritten by the Women’s Health Resource Library, which specifically requested a female sculptor. To place Cleat on a ledge in Winter Harbor, for example, the symposium had to address concerns raised by the Department of Environmental Protection and local boat owners.

Cleat was the last piece to be put in place. Weighing more than eight tons, the piece had to be lowered onto metal posts at low tide, requiring a truck and a crane capable of lifting such a load and easing it into place.

“One of the difficulties, and also one of the benefits, is that each town does things differently,” Salisbury says. “We asked each town to put up about one-third of the cost of each sculpture. I think in the beginning they had no idea what to expect.”

But now that the pieces are in place, the host communities couldn’t be happier. The symposium’s website (www.schoodicsculpture.org) features a map and driving directions to each of the seven sculptures. The vandalism and graffiti that some feared have not materialized. The sculptures tend to blend in with, rather than dominate, their surroundings.

“The art is not just plopped there,” Salisbury says. “The artists came here and used the materials that are here, and the results have been impressive, especially for a place that hasn’t had a lot of public art before.”

Salisbury hopes to make the symposium a biannual event, and to interest more towns in helping to sponsor a sculpture. Plans are already in the works for a second Schoodic Symposium in 2009. Towns interested in having public art created for their community can contact the symposium via www.schoodicsculpture.org.