Burton Street Elementary School students, staff, parents and guests saw the unveiling of a new addition to the school’s sculpture garden last week — an original creation by local artists Dorothy Riester and David Harper.
The unveiling occurred last Thursday, May 28, after the fourth grade concert during Fine Arts Night at Burton Street.
“This is the moment we’ve been anticipating,” said Burton Street Principal Mary Ann MacIntosh, as the new sculpture stood covered in a blue tarp in the sculpture garden courtyard. “All week long, students and staff have been walking by the sculpture garden wondering what this is.”
What it was was a small elegant assemblage of smooth scrap wood, currently untitled, which Riester originally created in 2013. Riester, age 98, founder of Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, made the piece table-sized scale, and local sculptor, David Harper, made an enlarged model of the piece for installation in the school sculpture garden. Harper perhaps is best known locally for his “outdoor library” installation, “Stacks,” now at the Art Park.
Paul Manion, a retired SUNY‐ESF forestry professor and owner of a backyard sawmill, as well as skilled wood artist and craftsman, cut the raw materials needed for this project from local woods and provided advice on the assemblage process, Harper said. Harper then shaped, finished and assembled the artwork.
Harper, who attended the unveiling event and actually removed the tarp from the sculpture, told the audience of children and adults that Riester, at age 96, created the sculpture; “I just took it and made it bigger.”
Burton Street art teacher Mary Damon, who oversees the small collection of sculptures in the courtyard, said the new sculpture “is a testimony to the love of and commitment to art.”
“Our children benefit from the arts in so many ways,” she said. “The arts build community.”
Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He can be reached at [email protected].
