The 50th Sculpture Invitational ~ 2022

Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill invited 9 artists to participate in its first ever Sculpture Invitational to celebrate its 50th Anniversary of Castle Hill at the Edgewood Farm Campus, 3 Edgewood Way. The sculptors were a diverse group from carved wood installation, to sculpting with invasive species to bronze, ceramic, stainless steel and everything in between. The artists included: David Boyajian, Laura Frazure, Susan Lyman, Justin Cifello, Nancy Rahnasto Osborne, Tina Tarantal, Rob Silverstein, Ellyn Weiss and Kensuke Yamada. Many of the sculptures are still on display.

View a Video of the Sculptures! Thanks for sharing Ellyn, Bob and Nora Weiss!

Artists Include:

David Boyajian - Four Winds

References navigational points for migration and nesting , for all things seeking sanctuary . This sculpture is fabricated from stainless steel . The sculpture stands 11’ tall 6’ wide and 6’ deep . The base is 42” in DI and has four mounting tabs to anchor the sculpture to a concrete base .

David Boyajian is an artist, art instructor, and the owner of David Boyajian Sculpture Studio in New Fairfield, Connecticut. In the early 1980s, Boyajian studied at Alfred University, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and earned his MFA from the Maryland Institute Rinehart School of Sculpture. Following his fine art education, Boyajian continued his studies while assisting figurative sculptors Wolfgang Behl, Elbert Weinberg, and Andrew Coppola.

Justin Cifello - The Edgewood Serpent

Invasive woody plants (Glossy Buckthorn [Frangula alnus], Bush Honeysuckle [Lonicera sp.], Bittersweet [Celastrus orbiculatus), Grapevine [Vitis sp.] and rebar. Invasive species are the dragons of the plant world, laying waste to ecosystems and hoarding habitat for themselves. This piece was built on a skeleton of entwined shrubs driven several feet into the ground, anchored with rebar. Vines were then woven into and around, binding the piece together. The variety of species were chosen for their complimentary structures, and diversity of colors and textures. The red eyes and tongue are bittersweet roots, and the crown of horns are honeysuckle stumps. By harvesting these materials outside of their fruiting season and securing roots high in the piece, every care was taken to prevent the spread of invasives.

Del Filardi - Turkey, Steel

Winner of many awards for sculpture is an artist of diverse talents. She came to metal sculpture in her intense search for self expression, self fulfillment She burst forth with her greatest productivity when she found herself mastering the challenge of steel with the welding torch.

Her work possess a strength of form that is inherent in the metal with which she works. This can be seen in her birds made of steel. Many of the prizes and honors Del has received in past years were for her "Birds of Endangered Species". Working as naturalist and artist and giving minute attention to detail, Del Filardi captures in steel the dynamism and movement of the birds - each is held a a moment of action - their beauty, grandeur and power coming through.

Laura Frazure - Poses of Resistance

This is a series of life size figures inspired by the protests for social justice in the United States and around the world. I consider this series to be “historical fiction” as I have modeled the sculptures from images of women protesting during the summer of 2020 in Philadelphia. I have tried to stay true to the poses, body conformation, hair styles and ethnicity of the women in the images as I “invented” their bodies in action. Some of the poses are iconic – the fist and the hands raised above the head – and some are idiosyncratic and expressive of massive frustration and attempts to communicate. Presenting the women nude, pulls them away from the specifics of time and place and transports them into the realm of the tradition of heroic sculpture. They become representations of ideals of social justice and resistance embodying strength, conviction and power.

Laura Frazure is a sculptor and Assistant Professor in the School of Art at The University of the Arts. She has taught anatomy at The New York Academy of Art, the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing and the Tianjin Academy of Fine Art in Tianjin.

If you would like to make a donation to support a person of color for an artist residency at Castle Hill, please consider a gift to the program involving a new partnership with Morgan State University (the oldest HBCU in the US).

Joyce Johnson - Figure in the Apple Tree, Plaster

Since Joyce Johnson was one of the founders of Castle Hill, we felt she should be in the first 50th Anniversary Sculpture Show .

“Tracking the inspiration for a single work of art or a series could be a formidable task. Involved may be the conscious, unconscious, observation and random or specific thought. For myself, I could only agree that my habitat, experimentation and visual impacts have much to do with what and how I create and that the choice of a rural seaside environment in which I live was not by chance. I am especially lured to usually sublime ocean and dunes and excited by the endless changes in those visions that can pass like a moving camera, exciting me, calming me, and sending me to a meditative source from which works of art emerge.”

Susan Lyman - "Songs of Silence at Edgewood Farm"

2021-22, corkscrew willow, pine, wood dyes, gesso, permanent inks, acrylic varnish, 90" x 78 x 60" 2

The first version of this sculpture shown at my solo show "Harbinger" in 2021 was a fence-like installation of sinuous corkscrew willow branches I salvaged from a tree severely damaged by a microburst in a park in Boston. I stripped the bark, dyed, sanded, and painted the wood, and affixed the six vertical forms, at once tree-like and human-like, with wooden birds, painted a somber asphalt black. Compressing and enclosing the work into the symmetrical 5' x 6' former sauna here has given the work intimacy, and is perhaps is a place of refuge, for humans and birds and the sole resident red squirrel, who doesn't seem to have minded my moving in.

This symmetrical beautifully-proportioned compact shed/shack/house/refuge was built by Malcolm Meldahl for use as a wood-fired sauna. The structure has two windows (no glass and several mullions missing), a slender door opening with the door removed, no floor, save for several floor joists, and is 84 x 58 x 71” (h x w x d, interior dimensions). Years of weather and sun exposure have imparted a well-worn patina to the structure.

Susan Lyman is a sculptor and painter who has lived year-round in Provincetown since 1981 when she was awarded a Visual Arts Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center. She is also the recipient of grants from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Artists' Foundation of Boston.

Kensuke Yamada - "Boy", Ceramic, 6’ x 4’

“Closed eyes, the angle of the head with the blue ear and swayed arms are gestures of listening. He is there to listen to wind, birds, animals, and seasons. When I visited the very beautiful open space at Edgewood Farm.
That is the scale and type of figure I wanted to make. It was very specifically made for the area of Cape Cod.” —Kensuke

“In my sculpture I seek figurative extensions of these shared experiences. Clay has become another primary source of communication for me. The vocabulary consists of gestures, patterns, textures, colors and rhythms. In conversation these qualities bring the figure to life.”

“With clay I look for sculptural conversations that evoke the beauty, the subtleties, the sadness and the humor of our everyday life. In viewing my sculpture I hope for people to enjoy the moment, rather then the movement of time. I hope for my work to fill the space between two seemingly distant things, to provide a connection and thus create the story of you and me.”

Kensuke Yamada was born in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan and received his MFA at the University of Montana. He received his BA at The Evergreen State College in Washington. Kensuke’s exaggerated playful figurative work has been exhibited through out the United States and a residency at the Archie Bray Foundation and was the recipient of the 2009-2010 MJD Bray Fellowship award. He was a Resident Artist at The Clay Studio(Philadelphia) from 2012 - 2013. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Little Rock, Arkansas.

Our Board Presidents - Current and Past

Tina Tarantal - A Daughter/bronze

The small figure placed in the garden questions at least two things. What is there to see that is right in front of you and how nice it feels to wear a dress. Making this sculpture was driven by observation and desire. It required responses to design and form, concentration and a commitment to the process.

Elsa (Tina) Tarantal has been teaching Figure Modeling for many years and is a Professor Emerita at the University of the Arts. Her studio work in figurative sculpture, modeling in clay and bronze casting, began while she was an undergraduate at The Cooper Union and continued throughout her graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. The Rosenfeld Gallery in Philadelphia and the Kendall Gallery in Wellfleet have represented her paintings, sculpture and commissioned portraits. She has created public sculpture commissioned by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, is a member of the National Sculpture Society and has received awards for her work in juried exhibitions.

Nancy Rahnasto Osborne - Lookout, one of a kind lost wax bronze

Engaging abstract form and energy. At rest, but ready to pounce. 2D planes playfully intertwine to create shifting 3D form as viewed in the round.

In 2008, Nancy began to spend summers on the Cape pursuing art classes at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, studying sculpture with the legendary Joyce Johnson, and subsequently with Romolo Del Deo. Her Oyster Digger Series of oil paintings and bronzes were shown at The Works Gallery in Wellfleet and at Castle Hill. In 2019 her abstract bronzes were included in member and juried shows at Truro Center for the Arts and PAAM, and her bronze “Maiden Voyage” was installed and featured in The Provincetown Commons sculpture garden 2019-2021.

Rob Silverstein - Swing Dancing (Stainless Steel)

From a series where I would imagine a form made by taking a length of 6 inch by 6 inch steel bar and bending it like a gumby to create a figure. The two figures created in this composition are intended to suggest a dancing couple.

Rob Silverstein is a retired lawyer who spent most of his professional career as the general counsel for a large real-estate development company in the New York Metropolitan area, and whose primary non-professional interest has always been art. He received his bachelors’ degree from Brown University and his law degree from NYU Law School. His exposure to art began early, as his mother ran a charitable art show in suburban New Jersey for three decades. Since his retirement he has been an art student both in Manhattan and at Castle Hill, where the quality of his experience in workshops and in the community led him to join the Board. He has also served on the board of New Jersey Future, and as the president of several co-op and condominium boards. He lives in New York and Wellfleet.

Ellyn Weiss - Hybrid, wire and recycled plastic bags

The mixture of man-made, discarded and natural elements posits a fast-approaching time when it will not be possible to completely separate the two, in our bodies or our environment.

Ellyn Weiss is a visual artist in two and three dimensions and an independent curator. She has had over 25 solo or featured shows and has participated in numerous juried and curated exhibitions. Ellyn works with a wide variety of materials; the materials used in recent shows include wax, oil bar, dry pigment, wire, plastic dip and tar. http://ellynweiss.com