“Harold Rittenberry: Love is All” ($29.99)
Harold Rittenberry working on a bench that commeorates the integration of the University of Georgia. Photo by Dorothy Kozlowski for University of Georgia Marketing and Communications.
At the core of artist Harold Rittenberry Jr.’s work is a deep love for nature. Many of his sculptures celebrate local culture or commemorate historic events. Others reflect his interior world, an imaginative realm where animals of the African savanna coexist with mythological creatures. His steel silhouettes often include messages that gently remind us to center hope, joy, peace, care and his greatest insight, “love is all,” within our lives. Today, his iconic rust-colored sculptures are woven into the landscape of Athens and beyond, appearing across parks, galleries, community centers, retail spaces and lush gardens. The Georgia Museum of Art holds multiple works by Rittenberry in its collection, including a large sculpture resembling a birdcage that stands near the side entrance and a bench in the outdoor breezeway. The new museum publication “Harold Rittenberry: Love is All” is the first monograph on the artist. It opens with a biography by Dan T. Coenen, UGA professor emeritus of law, who reveals what led the artist to teach himself to weld. Robert Clements, UGA professor emeritus of art and fellow sculptor, provides a timeline of Rittenberry’s success with commissions and describes how the two collaborated on proposals to budding public art programs
across Georgia. William Underwood Eiland, former director of the museum, contextualizes Rittenberry’s work within a broader perspective and joins Shawnya Harris, the museum’s Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art, for an interview with the artist. In addition to many photographs of Rittenberry’s popular towers, benches and gates, the book pulls together rarely seen tabletop sculptures, paintings, drawings, wood carvings and masks.
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