Leslie Fry’s Colossal AcornHead lands at Tufts University, Boston

Colossal AcornHead. 2012. Bronze, edition of five. 30Ë x 60Ë x 30Ë

On May 4, 2012 Tufts students and faculty did double-takes passing the familiar tree on the path below Tisch Library. Colossal AcornHead gazed upward toward the sky, oblivious to all the attention. The recently cast bronze sculpture (edition of five, 30 x 60 x 30 inches) is on loan for one year as part of a new outdoor public art program initiated by Dr. Amy Schlegel, director of galleries and collections at Tufts University. The sculpture’s next destination will be the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in nearby Lincoln, Massachusetts, in late spring 2013.

Over the course of a year approximately 75,000 people will walk by this sculpture sited near Professor's Row and Latin Way on Tufts University’s main campus in Medford, four miles from downtown Boston. An identification plaque directs interested viewers to phone and hear artist Leslie Fry speak about the work (617-449-7520, enter number 202). Below is an excerpt from her recorded statement:

In my art the natural world connects with the human-made world. For me, Colossal AcornHead is about human consciousness rooted in nature – that our “heads” and the earth are inseparable and symbiotic. Our heads have done great damage to our earth, and I think Colossal AcornHead is a good reminder of our essential connectedness.

Courtesy of Tufts Photography/Alonso Nichols

Leslie Fry’s sculptures and works on paper have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the U.S.

and abroad, including Exit Art, Thread Waxing Space,

and Artists Space in New York; Kunsthaus in Hamburg, Germany; Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul; Couvent des Cordeliers in Paris; Windspiel Galerie in Vienna; Centre

des Arts Visuels in Montreal; Tampa Museum of Art in Florida; and Cornell University’s Johnson Museum in Ithaca, New York.

Her public projects have been specific responses to architecture, history, and landscape. Commissions have included Wave Hill in New York; Songchu Art Valley International Sculpture Park in Korea; Kohler Arts Center

in Wisconsin; Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montreal; Burlington City Arts in Vermont; and Pinellas County Cultural Affairs, City of Tampa Public Art Program, and Broward Public Art and Design Program in Florida.

Articles about Fry’s art have appeared in House and Garden, Dwell, Sculpture, Art Journal, Ms. Magazine,

Art New England, and the St. Petersburg Times. Her

garden sculpture was featured in the New York Times

last summer. See the most recent article about her work

in the current issue of Vermont Magazine.