Long Description:?The plaque reads as follows:
Sculpture by Rachelle Dowdy
Donated to Alaska by
The
Wild
Foundation
8th World Wilderness Congress, 2005
Vance G. Martin
President, The wild Foundation
Mark Begich
Mayor, City of Anchorage
Taken from the following :
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DOWDY TRANSFORMS KEY BANK PLAZA
Local artist Rachelle Dowdy has been selected to create a
permanent piece of public sculpture to be donated to the city of
Anchorage in conjunction with the 8th World Wilderness Congress
(8thWWC), Sept. 30 – Oct. 6, 2005.
“Rachelle Dowdy’s piece was selected because committee members
felt it was both artistically strong and conveyed a message that
the 8th WWC was bringing to Alaska – the essential interdependence
of human society and wild nature,” said Vance Martin, president of
the WILD Foundation and 8th WWC Executive Committee chair.
The sculptures will be located in the open plaza at 601 W. First
Ave., in front of the building currently known as the Key Bank
Plaza. Dowdy said she envisions the four figures located randomly
throughout the plaza to help the viewer actively participate with
the individual sculptures.
“It is an honor to be selected to visually represent this 8th
WWC,” Dowdy said. Dowdy a 1996 graduate of the University of Alaska
Fairbanks with a bachelor’s of fine art in sculpture and painting
is also a teacher with the Artist in School Program and has helped
youth experiment with art in various schools across Anchorage.
The theme of the 8th WWC, “Wilderness, Wildlands, and People: A
Partnership for the Planet,” was the inspiration of this venture
for Dowdy. “What partly inspired me to submit this proposal was a
recent statistic stated on the radio by a Fish and Game official:
‘75 percent of the Anchorage population loves cohabitating with the
local wildlife,’” Dowdy said.
For this project, Dowdy will use the metaphor of transformation
with human and animal forms. The animals represented in the
sculptures live or migrate through Anchorage.
Dowdy decided for this project, the sculptures should be made of
ferro-concrete – a process of layering concrete over a frame,
allowing for a hollow, lightweight structure. Dowdy’s
experimentations with ferro-concrete culminated this summer with a
show at The International Gallery of Art, where the Anchorage
Museum of History and Art purchased Hollow Search; Crane Women
Hunts with funds made available by the Rasmussen Foundation.
