Nine Contemporary Sculptors: Fellows of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial

Presented at Manhattan’s UBS Art Gallery in the autumn of 2005, Nine Contemporary Sculptors: Fellows of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial celebrated the living legacy of the annual fellowship established in 1977. The Saint-Gaudens Memorial Fellowship recognizes mid-career sculptors demonstrating exceptional talent with an unrestricted grant and a solo exhibition at the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire.

To bridge 19th-century American monumentality with modern spatial practices, the exhibition juxtaposed original historical works by Augustus Saint-Gaudens—including bronze study busts for his Standing Lincoln and the General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument—against groundbreaking works by nine fellowship honorees awarded between 1983 and 2003. The featured sculptors demonstrated how three-dimensional form has expanded from classical bronze casting into architectural installation, found-object accumulation, and surreal assemblage.

Participating Artists & Exhibited Works

Do Ho Suh (2001 Fellow)
Featured Work: Gate, Small
Medium: Translucent silk fabric, stainless steel tubing
Overview: Suspended from the gallery ceiling to hover just above the floor, this 1:1 scale, weightless reconstruction of the entrance archway to Suh’s childhood home in Seoul served as an ethereal threshold between his native Korean heritage and his transnational life in the West.

Tara Donovan (2003 Fellow)
Featured Work: Untitled (Toothpicks)
Medium: Wooden toothpicks
Overview: A monumental geometric cube held together purely by friction and gravity without glue or fasteners, showcasing Donovan’s signature transformation of everyday, mass-produced disposables into complex, organic structures.

Judy Pfaff (1996 Fellow)
Featured Work: Two untitled wall assemblages
Medium: Wire, tin cans, glass, and flexible aluminum ducting
Overview: Highly energetic, three-dimensional “drawings in space” that pushed dynamically out from the gallery walls, turning industrial detritus into lyrical, ephemeral abstractions.

Petah Coyne (1987 Fellow)
Featured Work: Wall-mounted wax sculpture; photographs from the Bridal Series
Medium: Melted white wax, ribbons, feathers; gelatin silver prints
Overview: Evoking themes of memory, ritual, and vulnerability, Coyne presented a tactile wall piece encased in dripping wax alongside motion-blurred photographs capturing the ghostlike rush of wedding gowns.

Alison Saar (1997 Fellow)
Featured Work: Kiss on a Rope
Medium: Carved wood, bracket, rope
Overview: Drawing on African, African-American, and Caribbean folk traditions, Saar suspended two expressive, hand-carved wooden heads along a thick hanging rope, aligned in an intimate moment of osculation.

Peter Shelton (2000 Fellow)
Featured Work: Purplegulch
Medium: Cast mixed media
Overview: A bulbous, lavender-hued form that blurred the boundary between anatomical bodily fragment and inverted, sealed ritual vessel, reflecting Shelton’s long-standing investigation of physical spatial awareness.

Andrew Topolski (1986 Fellow)
Featured Work: Nothingman (work-in-progress) and caged pillar assemblage
Medium: Mixed-media assemblage, taxidermy, stone, steel
Overview: A surreal, haunting commentary on ecological fragility and industrial distress, featuring an enclosure containing a taxidermy goose in a noose, complemented by a caged tarantula mounted to a stone-studded pillar.

Walter Dusenbery (1984 Fellow)
Featured Work: Tempio Bretton, Brea Portal, and site-study models
Medium: Carved red and yellow travertine
Overview: Representing a direct, modern continuation of classical stone carving, Dusenbery exhibited precise travertine architectural models highlighting portals, columns, and monumental public archetypes.

Alex McFarlane (1983 Fellow)
Featured Work: Invented mini-city installation
Medium: Solid carved graphite
Overview: Sprawling across a vast tabletop, McFarlane’s ongoing urban project featured clustered, geometrically complex architectural forms carved entirely from dense graphite, offering an austere meditation on scale and urban density.