Throughout the summer of 2008, George Sherwood’s kinetic sculpture delighted visitors at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Nine stainless steel pieces, ranging in scale from a table-top interior WIND ORCHID to the thirty foot tall TENDRILS, animated the landscape. Abstracted HERONS danced in the pond among lilies, with their reflections mirrored in the water’s surface. FLOCK OF BIRDS soared over the Event Lawns as individual helixes rotated in light, yet moved together as one. In the Entry Gardens, FUSION contained the synergistic power to transform with the brush of a butterfly wing, and on the Great Lawn, TENDRILS traced the wind’s path with lingering form while flashing in moments of light.
Wind driven and meticulously crafted to catch the light, George Sherwood’s sculpture resonates deeply, striking a chord that connects viewers to their primal relationship with the natural world. While other kinetic artists use more geometric forms that reflect a mechanistic worldview, George Sherwood celebrates botanical forms and patterns in nature with proportional harmony. Sherwood creates sculpture intricate in its complexity yet pared down to elegant essential form. His work contains great volume without mass. The result quickens our heart and nurtures our soul with each breath of wind and flash of sunlight. (more…)