Stuart & Aaron working
Cole & Mallory working
LUNCH BREAK!
Ken Payne working
Jason working
Eric, Mike & Jesse working
Carl working
Austin working
Andy working

Monday June 7, 2010

Pedvale Open Air Museum and Sculpture Park

Sabile, Latvia

The Summer Sculpture Abroad Program is more than half way through this year’s schedule and at the halfway point in our Pedvale experience. The students have self-selected to work alone or as groups in creating site specific sculptures in the environment of the Pedvale Sculpture Park. Austin Sheppard, Andy Denton and Jason Stein , all from ECU , have chosen to work alone. Cole Kernstine ( ECU) has teamed up with Mallory Schiller( Buffalo State) while Colton Winchester ( ECU) has teamed with Curtis Miller ( SCAD) . Buffalo State students Zachery Pritchard and Grace Higgenbottom have formed a team and ECU students Eric White and Jesse Morrisey have joined Univ. of Oklahoma graduate students and ECU alumni Alex Knox and Mike Hill to form the largest team. ECU student Aaron Earley has teamed with ECU Group Leader Stuart Kent. Buffalo State Professor Kenneth Payne is making a sculpture as is ECU Professor Carl Billingsley. Images of the completed sculptures and the titles will be posted as soon as possible. Several Latvian artists are also making sculptures for this season in the park as well as Pedvale founder Ojars Feldbergs and his daughter and fellow sculptor Laura Feldbergs. Dutch sculptor Chris Peterson is in residence at the park and has already finished a large granite sculpture and has started on a second large stone!

The season theme for the park according to Ojars Feldbergs is “Stone/Color”. The Latvian artists are creating works under the group title of “Art in the Bushes”. Our group is using the group title “Stone.Color.Response”. Ojars and Laura have been documenting the artists at work in the park as they themselves alternate between working on their own sculptures and managing the thousands of details necessary to the symposium and to running the park. I will try to get some of those images on the Blog as soon as I can. Cable internet connections are not available in the rural sections of Latvia yet so we are restricted to one phone modem for all internet communications so , as you can imagine, there is a constant demand for access to the line and every request must be prioritized. That should explain why there have been relatively few posting while we have been here. Access to the net while the group is in St. Petersburg will be via netcafes so it is much more available and I expect that Stuart and Andy will be posting brief reports from there.

Carl Billingsley