Sculpture Fest 2005, Woodstock Vt

From ‘Wave to ‘Dream’, the Theme is Movement (excerpts)

By William Craig for Valley News, White River Junction, Vt

"Movement holds sway at Sculpture Fest 2005. In this year's edition of Woodstock's annual outdoor art exhibition, most of the chief delights are going somewhere.

"But for all these fixed achievements, there's still no denying that the show's greatest pleasures are in motion.”

"Chief among these, occupying Sculpture Fest's featured-artist showcase spot, is George Sherwood's "Standing Wave," a 20-foot-high pedestaled mobile. "Wave’s graceful, branching, tapered arms of stainless steel are constantly shifting their aerial alignments, sometimes spreading to command the ground around their 16-foot circumference, sometimes reaching up in concert. Sometimes they proceed in slow motion, the gingko-leaf blade shapes at the end of each trunk catching even slight breezes. When the wind whips, so does "Standing Wave." And the curves are always catching spaces between them, spaces that unaccountably hurt our hearts as they are scissored and disappear.”

"The sculptor, as the line from Merchant of Venice goes, "in this motion like an angel sings." Sherwood was a 2004 fellow(see note below) at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, and "Standing Wave" is one of the most exciting pieces of public-scale art I've ever seen. Some municipality should snap it up and make a park a masterpiece.””

"Sherwood is also represented by the delightful, small-scale "Double Square Wave," which swings two arms of spiral aluminum sails that shrink and unfurl in endless metamorphosis. Like "Standing Wave," this is a design as deeply satisfying as it is universally accessible.”

Note: Summer 2004 solo exhibition at St. Gaudens Historic Trust Site, not a "Fellow" position. GS