The dress of Rutland poet and writer Julia Dorr, designed as part of a new sculpture planned for the growing Rutland Sculpture Trail, will feature imagery based on one of her nature-inspired poems. Artist Amanda Sisk has incorporated a butterfly, a bee and other plants and creatures featured in Dorr’s poem “Over the Wall,” a celebration of the Earth and its joys, in her design of the sculpture, set for carving and installation later this year.
“I envision her dress fabric illustrating many of the specific, local, Vermont flora and fauna symbolized in the poem,” Sisk said. “It felt appropriate to incorporate them into the design of her dress.”
Dorr, a prolific prose and poetry writer, was among the most successful female writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her work drew the interest and friendship of distinguished authors including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendall Holmes, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who she hosted in Rutland. She was an early and strong advocate for women’s education and rights, and a Rutland leader. In addition to founding the Rutland Free Library, she founded Grace Congregational Church’s women’s cultural group, Fortnightly, which she led for 33 years.
Sisk has spent months researching Dorr and ideas for the design and has completed sketches of the piece, which will feature a larger-than-life bust of Dorr, her hair in a braid swirled around her head, the dress based on photos of Dorr and natural symbols from the poem.
“Nature was a dominant and revered theme in Julia Dorr’s life and written works,” Sisk said. “I feel that she had a quiet but fierce love for it as well as for her heroines, real and fictional. A choice was made to illustrate this love as part of the ‘fabric’ of her being.
“In addition to reading her works, time was spent in Dorr’s natural Vermont surroundings and tracing some of her footsteps in a walking pilgrimage through Great Britain,” Sisk said. “My hope is that her personality, which has been described as both subtle and strong, will be relayed through the poetic symbols in her dress fabric and via her unflinching gaze.”
With sketches complete, Sisk has begun working on a clay maquette, which will be converted to plaster, and carver Evan Morse will then use as the model for the marble carving later this year. Sisk and Morse also teamed up to produce the Ann Story sculpture on West Street.
Sisk has been an instructor at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center for several years. She is teaching a three-day workshop in clay portraiture this fall.
“We’re excited to see the design on the sculpture of Julia Dorr,” said Randal Smathers, director of the Rutland Free Library, which will host the finished piece.
“It’s a wonderful tribute to the library’s founder, and we’re all eager to see it looking out over the city from the library,” Smathers said.
Three women with decades of service to Vermont personally funded the ninth piece planned for the Rutland Sculpture trail – Joan Gamble, a strategic change consultant, Mary Moran, retired superintendent of Rutland City Schools, and Mary Powell, former president and CEO of Green Mountain Power. The sculpture will be installed on the lawn of the library, on the edge of downtown Rutland, facing into the city center.
The Rutland Sculpture Trail is an initiative led by the the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center, GMP, MKF Properties, and Vermont Quarries to create art and interest in downtown, generate community pride, and honor important local and regional history. The artworks, carved from stone quarried and donated by Vermont Quarries, are being installed in and around downtown Rutland, and presented as gifts to the city.
Another piece is nearing completion, honoring Martin Henry Freeman, a Rutland native who became the first African American college president in the United States. A sculpture honoring Paul Harris, founder of Rotary International, is also expected to be completed in 2020, and organizers continue to seek funding for other pieces.
Completed sculptures in the series include:
“Stone Legacy,” a tribute to the region’s stone industry, which stands in the Center Street Marketplace.
A tribute to Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book,” which stands outside Phoenix Books.
A piece honoring Olympic skier and environmentalist Andrea Mead Lawrence, on Merchants Row near Center Street.
A sculpture of Revolutionary War hero Ann Story and her son Solomon, which stands at the corner of West and Cottage streets.
A piece honoring 20 African Americans enlisted or drafted in Rutland to fight in the 54th Regiment in the Civil War, the first black regiment in the north, mounted on the Center Street wall of the Castleton Downtown Gallery.
A sculpture honoring Alcoholics Anonymous founder William G. Wilson, known as “Bill W,” who was born in Dorset and lived for many years in Rutland.
