Unveiling of the outdoor stainless steel sculpture,
The Egrets

Bloch gives lecture to the Orlando Museum of Art donors
on her monumental garden sculptures that
Brookgreen Gardens and Museum had commissioned.

On December 10, 2009 Dee and Bruce Douglas hosted a reception unveiling their new metal bird sculpture, The Egrets sculpted by CT sculptor Babette Bloch.  During the reception the Orlando Museum of Art arranged for Bloch to speak about her process for the site-specific monumental sculptures commissioned by Brookgreen Gardens, the public sculpture garden located in Murells Inlet, SC. These over-life size sculptures were created to aid in teaching about the history of the Lowcountry as well as to remember and honor the lives lived at this historical site.  It is because of this and the reflective nature of the four stainless steel sculptures that she named the series Reflecting History.  The lecture illuminated the process from beginning sketches and ideas through the completion of the laser cut stainless steel sculptures.

“Before beginning drawings for this project, I immersed myself for six months researching the South Carolina rice culture, and consulting with experts in the field,” Ms. Bloch explains.   “I envisioned the sculptures, set along Brookgreen’s Lowcountry Trail, as building a bridge — a bridge of hope, of healing, and a place for contemplation and understanding.”

 Brookgreen’s Vice President for Collections and Curator of Sculpture, Robin Salmon, shepherded the project.  “When I first saw photos of Babette’s nine-foot-high sculptures, Pioneers, installed at an historic site in Michigan, I thought that her unique style and medium could produce ethereal figures that appeared to be coming from the rice field.  The see-through quality of her figures keeps the landscape in focus, while reflecting it in the steel itself.  Her figures are ghostly reminders of the antebellum past.”

“When the sun is behind the figures, they will read as silhouettes,” said Ms. Bloch.  “And when the sun dances over the surfaces, the figures are a shimmering silver imbued with the hues of the surrounding landscape.”

Ron Daise, Brookgreen Gardens’ Vice President for Creative Education, added, “The sculptures, archaeological exhibits and interpretive signage displayed on the Lowcountry Trail will inform about Gullah history and culture and rice plantation heritage in ways unparalleled elsewhere.  Visitors will find the trail contemplative and historical.”  Mr. Daise is well known to the general public as the star and cultural consultant of Nickelodeon’s TV’s Gullah Gullah Island preschool series.  As a fourth-generation Gullah descendent who grew up on St. Helena Island, he is an acknowledged expert on the culture that enslaved Africans brought to America.

The artist, in accepting the commission, thought long and hard about how best to present the subject matter.  “These figures are portals to a time gone by, but they also are mirrors to our souls,” said Ms. Bloch.  “I fully expect that viewing them will elicit a range of emotions, from pride of place to mourning, echoes of the lives lived at this historic site.”

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