Spotlight New England
George Sherwood: In Delicate Balance
Organized by the Currier Museum of Art
May 29 – September 6, 2010

Rapid technological and industrial innovation defined much of the twentieth century, and early on, sculptors reacted with experiments in materials and forms, including moving parts. The sculpture of Massachusetts artist George Sherwood has its roots in this history, with delicate constructions of highly polished stainless steel and other metals engineered to gracefully and subtly respond to changing environmental conditions. With a recent installation on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in Boston, Sherwood is an accomplished artist from the region, and honorably continues the Spotlight New England series, initiated in 2008.

While typically shown outdoors, Sherwood’s sculpture exhibited inside the Winter Garden and Putnam Gallery is an opportunity to focus on the work’s finely engineered mechanics. Alexander Calder’s mobile in the nearby contemporary gallery and Mark di Suvero’s kinetic sculpture Origins in Zachos Court—both part of the Currier’s Permanent Collection— form a conversation with Sherwood’s work and create a context and history for kinetic practices.  In Delicate Balance includes an outdoor installation and is the Currier’s first temporary exhibition to feature work in the Winter Garden.

Watch the video about the installation of this exhibition.

This exhibition is supported by David and Barbara Roby and by the Fleisher Family Fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.

^{Image Credits: George Sherwood, Steel Life I and II, 2009, Stainless steel.}

Botanica, a kinetic sculpture by acclaimed artist George Sherwood, was installed on The Rose F. Kennedy Greenway, Atlantic Avenue across from Rowes Wharf, in July 2009. This temporary art exhibit will run from July 23, 2009 to December 2010, with the provision that it may be removed during the winter months.

“Botanica” was originally chosen by a juried panel in a collaborative project between the Conservancy and the UrbanArts Institute of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design to install a few temporary exhibits of sculpture in advance of the October 2008 Greenway Inaugural Celebration. However, lack of funding and complexity of installation prevented installation of this work at that time. This spring the Conservancy received the support of a generous private donor. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Sherwood sculpture featured in Woodstock Magazine

By Meg Brazill

(for .pdf article with images click here)

George Sherwood is a kinetic sculptor. His sculptures move, depending on wind and air currents. In just a word or two, the titles of his work describe the works themselves: Tendrils, towering at thirty feet, Wind Orchid, Square Wave, Arc Angel. Some of his sculptures, such as Heron(s) or Tea of Turns, are figurative, depicting not just birds but their natural movements.

Visitors to Woodstock’s 2005 Sculpture Fest remember Sherwood’s Standing Wave sculpture, sited prominently at the crest of a field. Its wind-driven choreography intrigued audiences and, during Sculpture Fest’s opening weekend, it also served as a partner to Flock Dance Troupe, whose dancers performed in front of it. Read the rest of this entry »

By Thomas Weaver
Vermont Quarterly Magazine Winter issue,
Burlington, Vermont

For a sculpture truly completed by a gust of wind stirring it into motion, there are few better places to be than the Shelburne Farms lakeshore. On a late-September morning, a steady breeze off Lake Champlain sets George Sherwood’s “Botanica” rotating in slow, graceful arcs that bring to mind, say, the rhythmic arm strokes of a swimmer, a Renaissance courtship dance, or plants waving in the wind. Read the rest of this entry »

By Steve Landwehr
Staff writer

IPSWICH — Mention sculpture, and most people probably conjure up images of Michelangelo’s “Pieta” or Rodin’s “The Thinker.” Formed of marble or bronze, their beauty is timeless and unchanging.

Ipswich artist George Sherwood crafts pieces that are intentionally more fluid, always changing and only truly come to life when they ride the wind.

Sherwood, 51, is a kinetic sculptor who fashions stainless steel tubes and plates into deceptively simple, moving art forms meant to be displayed outdoors. Eight years ago, he gave up a job designing toys for Lego in Boston for work in a studio a stone’s throw from his Argilla Road home.

“I basically changed a 31/2-hour commute to a 31/2-second one,” Sherwood says. Read the rest of this entry »