Public art sculpture installed in Canalfront Park
The City of Lewes Public Art Commission welcomes American artist DeWitt Godfrey, who spent the week of May 22 creating this year’s sculpture installation in Lewes Canalfront Park.
“The Gathering” is a large abstract sculpture of wide, circular cylinders made of weathering steel. It will remain in the park until October.
The public art commission continues to bring contemporary, world-class art to Lewes, raising the city’s profile as an arts destination.
Godfrey is an accomplished artist known for his public sculptures of banded steel. His work is grounded in responding to the environment, both the physical site of each project and the abstract geometry of the natural world. He is adept at collaborating with a wide range of people and agencies with unique parameters.
Natural geometries and systems — plant spores, seashells, honeycombs — inspire Godfrey’s sculptures. Through the process of packing and stacking conic and cylindrical steel forms, simple rules give rise to extraordinary complexity. His themes are a great fit for Lewes, with its surroundings of a rich and rare ecosystem.
The individual parts of each sculpture form a community of similar, yet distinct, dependent elements, which give shape to an aesthetic, structural and material ecosystem. The title for the Lewes work, “The Gathering,” suggests that the park and Lewes itself are places where people come together.
The public arts commission members thank the Lewes Mayor and City Council for its continued support.
This art installation is supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
Godfrey is a renowned public artist who has completed numerous sculptures using a variety of materials over the past 30 years, including many large-scale commissions for public art agencies, private clients, museums and universities. Godfrey completed his undergraduate work at Yale University, was a member of the inaugural group of Core Fellows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and received his master of fine arts degree from Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Godfrey has received numerous grants and fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Arts Artist’s Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship, the Japan Foundation Artist Fellowship, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Fellowship. He also served as a senior advisor for the Terre Foundation of American Art’s program in Giverny, France. Godfrey’s work can be found in several private and public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Brooklyn Museum; the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park; and Art OMI. His most recent commission is a work titled “Atlas,” completed at the Portland International Airport in Oregon.
