On the autumnal equinox I finished the installation of a sculpture to celebrate this time of year for a Boston Sculptors Gallery group exhibition of outdoor works animated by light at MARS.
During my consideration of site options at MARS last winter, I was attracted to the spectacular location of the grape arbor on the edge of a quarry pond. Hoping that this fall would be a time for post-Covid revelry, I imagined that the grape arbor during harvest season would be an ideal site for some sort of bacchanalian installation.
At a subsequent site visit I learned that the large granite basin next to the grape arbor had once harbored Paul Manship's 1953 sculpture of a maenad dancing nude in a fountain. (see photo) Maenads are mythic female followers of Dionysus. The name “maenads” literally means the “raving ones”. They engaged in ecstatic, inebriated, and frenzied dancing. With permission to use the empty basin as a pedestal, I decided to fill it with a new dancing maenad and set her aglow her with wine colored light. She transitions from first blush to fully flushed as evening deepens into night. Hopefully she lives up to her mythic reputation.
-Nancy Selvage
PS Do note the anatomical association between a satyr (on a vessel with a maenad at the Harvard Art Museums) and the bunches of grapes hovering around my maenad.