outdoor sculpture isn’t something that is added to a museum’s collection very often. It can be expensive, it is often difficult to install and outdoor space is limited, especially for works that may be on display for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, three new outdoor sculptures—by Andrew T. Crawford , Jane Manus and William J. Thompson —now grace the museum grounds.
JANE MANUS
Walk into the museum, through the lobby and into the Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden and you’ll find “Andreas,” the most recent addition to our outdoor gallery devoted to work by women. Created by Florida-based sculptor Jane Manus and on view in the exhibition “Jane Manus, Undaunted” (which closed here on February 12), it makes a dramatic statement in the middle of the garden. Manus uses welded aluminum for her sculptures. While it is a difficult material to work with, it doesn’t rust and is much lighter than steel. Manus has made art since she was a child. She was drawn to sculpture from the beginning, working in clay, and even had a kiln in her room in high school that she says almost burned down her house. She studied at the Art Institute in Boston, where she moved on to wood constructions, but that material has its issues, too. Wooden sculptures placed outside, where Manus wanted her work to be, often warp and decay. Her teacher Michael Phillips suggested she try welding and taught her how. “Once I started in metal, I never wanted to do anything else again. It was fast and forever and substantial,” said Manus. It is important that her sculptures work from all angles, as you walk around and sometimes through them, she added. Her artistic vocabulary is reminiscent of geometric sculptors such as Mark di Suvero, Tony Smith and Joel Shapiro, but her interpretations feel lighter on their feet. Her work was originally on display at the Georgia Museum of Art in 1996 as part of the celebrations for the opening of the University of Georgia’s Performing and Visual Arts Complex, and another one of her wall sculptures is also currently on display in the museum lobby. Art writer Lilly Wei wrote that “Andreas” makes her “think of a greatly elongated body in abstract form. I see the sem- blance of a head, torso, legs and feet, recalling the way Greek temples were conceived in correspondence to the human body, with a head (pediment), torso and legs (columns) and feet (the columns’ base). It is figurative while abstract, expressive while geometric. The result can not only be likened to the body at rest, but also to a body that is stretched, taut, on the cusp of movement, like a dancer about to make the next leap before landing nimbly into position.”
“...It is figurative while abstract, expressive while geometric. The result can not only be likened to the body at rest, but also to a body that is stretched, taut, on the cusp of movement, like a dancer about to make the next leap before landing nimbly into position.”
Lilly Wei
Walk through the museum lobby to the doors outside to view Jane Manus’ sculpture “Andreas” in the Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden, a space dedicated to work by women.
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