Explore the sculpture that adorns the University of Vermont campus, many created by UVM faculty and alumni. The last stop on the tour takes you to the entrance to the Fleming Museum, home to 25,000 objects that span the history of civilization.
Belladonna
Artist: Richard Erdman ’75 H’16
Gift of Richard and Madeleine Erdman
Sculptor Richard Erdman has a long relationship with UVM, dating back to his undergraduate days when he worked with two legendary mentors—artist Paul Aschenbach, who helped him find his calling, and varsity ski coach Chip Lacasse, who helped develop him into a two-time All-American in alpine.
Post-graduation, apprenticeships with stone carvers in Carrara, Italy, would also be key to Erdman’s development as an artist. Today, his work is on display in museums and corporate and private collections worldwide. His monumental sculpture “Passage” sits at the entrance to the Donald M. Kendall sculpture gardens at PepsiCo in Purchase, New York. Carved from a 450-ton block of travertine, the 25-by-16-foot “Passage” is the largest sculpture in the world carved from a single block of travertine.
"Belladonna" is one of three works by Erdman on campus.
Unlocked
Artist: Christopher Curtis ’74
Gift of Stephen and Petra Levin
"Unlocked" is sited on the UVM Green, just steps away from the Williams Hall studio where the sculptor cut his first stone under the instruction of Professor Paul Aschenbach. Curtis counts the late professor among the most influential people in his life. His voice—"keep chugging, you'll get there"—remains with Curtis as he takes on a new challenge or learns a new skill. One of Aschenbach's hammers, passed along to Curtis by the professor's family, is a prized possession. "A very personal tool I still use," he says. "Of course, I think of him whenever I handle it."
The artist is a native Vermonter, who has studied the geologic history of his home state. He counts "the discovery, selection, and recovery of the stone" as integral and enjoyable parts of his work process. "I take interest in the geological history of the stone I use as it helps contextualize humankind's place in the natural world," he says. "This is the core concept in my work."
"Unlocked" is made of granite from Groton, Vermont, whiter than the famous Barre gray granite. Curtis says he sought "a classically shaped egg-like stone. Not exotic or flashy in figuring or shape. I knew the puzzle cutting was the essence and wanted to keep the focus on that."
Areté Blu
Artist: Richard Erdman ’75 H’16
Gift of Richard and Madeleine Erdman
Erdman says the gift of “Areté Blu” completes a full circle with his UVM experience, a symbol of what the university gave him as a student—“where individualism and risk-taking were encouraged, where education was not just an assimilation of facts, but the training of the mind to think and dream.” Describing this particular work, the sculptor says, “Its emotive and energetic stance beckons visitors to live actively, live dangerously, live passionately—and in its contiguous form, live in continuity.”
“Areté Blu” joins Erdman’s “Primavera,” a gift of the Class of 2010, situated outside Jeffords Hall. Erdman also recently gave the university three more pieces, “Confluence,” "Omni," and “Belladona.”
Tree of Knowledge
Artist: Paul Aschenbach
Created by the late UVM sculpture professor for the entrance to Howe Library in 1961, this welded metal sculpture, placed on an elevated pedestal, abstractly depicts various branches of knowledge taught at the University of Vermont. A remarkable number of drawings and studies for this work are in the permanent collection of the Fleming Museum.
Aschenbach was also well known as a carver in marble and granite. Other work by the sculptor can be found in the Burlington area, including "Crucifix," which was commissioned in the early 1960s for the Chapel at Trinity College. The crucifix, in its tree-like form, is related in composition to the "Tree of Knowledge."
Sparkle Pony
Artist: Kat Clear ’01
On loan from the artist
“Sparkle Pony,” installed near Howe, is rooted in alumna artist Kat Clear's love of “My Little Pony” as a child of the eighties. Clear calls the work a “kid’s dream in a grown-up world.”
That duality comes into play with the materials, a hide of artificial turf over a metal armature. “Turf is a great partner to metal because it holds up outdoors just as well, if not better,” Clear says. “Conceptually, the turf is super alluring — the lush green — and reminds me of being barefoot in the grass on a lazy summer day. But the reality is that turf is a bit itchy and scratchy, not as supple as real grass. Perhaps just like the fantasy of being able to jump into that television screen and hang out with my childhood ‘My Little Pony’ pals and suddenly realize I am not a kid anymore.”
Flukes
Artist: Gordon Gund P ’91 ’93
Gift of Gordon and Llura Gund
Gordon Gund’s interest in sculpture traces to his childhood, attending Saturday morning art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He would study watercolor in college, become an avid photographer during four years in the U.S. Navy, and eventually find his way to sculpture when a friend introduced him to wood carving some thirty years ago. Gund increasingly turned his attention to art after retiring from a successful career in business and his family’s continuing philanthropic work, including support of UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment.
The sculptor, who has been blind since losing his sight to retinitis pigmentosa in 1971, says, “While with my eyes I can’t see the shapes I create, I feel them over and over again with my hands and my mind, and the result is in my mind forever.... It takes me more time and patience than most with sight, and letting go is generally felt with more uncertainty. So, it is extremely satisfying to finish something that I have doubted along the way, woken up with in the middle of the night, spent a lot of time on and given a lot of love.”
The “Flukes” bronze at UVM is rooted in Gordon Gund’s experience helping to free pilot whales beached outside his home on Nantucket. He and a group of family and friends spent hours using sheets and their own bodies to try to move the whales back out to open waters. Gund had the tail of one of the whales in his hands, pulling the animal, as others pulled on sheets under it to move it to safety. Gund says he will never forget the experience, and he began a small wood carving of Flukes shortly thereafter. A number of years later, he had the work cast in bronze, in the monumental scale of UVM’s work.
Primavera
Artist: Richard Erdman ’75 H’16
This 2010 sculpture, whose name means "spring" in Italian, sits in front of Jeffords Hall, home to the departments of plant biology and plant & soil science, and is nestled in the departments' gardens.
Bus Ball
Artist: Lars Fisk ’93
On loan from the artist
Lars Fisk has stretched the possibilities of sculptural spheres as a core element in his practice as an artist. "Parking Lot" ball. "Subway" ball. "Storage Locker" ball. "Mister Softee Ice Cream Truck" ball, to name just a few. “Bus Ball”—complete with classic green vinyl seats inside and tail lights that illuminate—complements the square lines of adjacent 1950s-era Hills Building and sits near the just-opened residential complex on central campus.
Fisk’s career as an artist has included extensive stage set and festival design, working as art director with the UVM-born band Phish. His “Barn Ball,” featured on the cover of Phish’s 2002 CD “Round Room,” is part of the Fleming Museum’s permanent collection, on display in the south lobby of the museum.
Lamentations
Artist: Judith Brown
Gift of the artist and the Stettenheim Foundation
This dramatic grouping of five life-size women figures was created in 1989 from welded scrap steel and painted black. A student of sculptor Theodore Roszak, known for such imaginative metal sculptures as "Spectre of Kitty Hawk" (1946-7), Brown's work was inspired by a dance piece of the same title by choreographer Martha Graham. The five figures are placed in the grove of locust trees on central campus.
Kindred Spirits
Artist: George Smith
Visiting artist-in-residence George Smith created "Kindred Spirits" at the University of Vermont during the 1990–1991 academic year. Sited at the entrance to the Fleming Museum, these two black welded steel conical shapes reflect the artist's interest in merging references to both the architectural and sculptural traditions of the Dogon culture in Africa and the traditions of Late Modernist minimal sculpture found in the work of American sculptors Tony Smith and David Smith. The title refers both to the nineteenth-century painting by that name (1841/NYPublic Library) by A.B. Durand, a painting which depicts artist Thomas Cole and writer William Cullen Bryant in the Catskills as the preeminent painter and poet of the American landscape, and to the affinity which Smith has for both African and Western cultures.
Tango
Tango sits in front of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Complex. The tall piece — made of steel, painted in three colors, and reminiscent of the mathematical symbol pi — comes to UVM from artist Eric Stromeyer’s Cold Hollow Sculpture Park in Enosburg Falls, Vt., where it has resided since its creation in 2008.
At 14 feet high, 10 feet wide and 24 feet long, the red, blue and yellow steel “Tango” joins the ranks of Paul Aschenbach’s “Tree of Knowledge” — located outside of Howe Library — as one of the tallest sculptures on campus.
Stromeyer sees “Tango” as “visually kinetic play on a portal, gateway or arch. In concept, it is closer to a [Japanese] torii gate, which marks a transition or passage from the mundane to the sacred."
At an installation ceremony, the sculpture was dedicated to UVM President Emeritus and Professor of Political Science Thomas Sullivan, saluting the former president’s devotion to public art.