Thel

"Over more to the right ... no, that's too far. Can't you swing that piece down over here?" Beverly Pepper is at work, and she isn't pleased. "Well, then you have to un-bolt that whole section." She sighs. It is late September, and Pepper is in Hanover to create "Thel," a 140-foot-long metal sculpture that will grace the lawn shared by Wheeler Hall and the Fairchild science complex. She has imported her own workmen, who are oblivious to her occasional storms of artistic temperament, and the sculpture emerges day by day from its underground roots.

The construction site is a scene of great curiosity. It has been excavated, leaving a large hole and a corresponding mound of dirt nearby. Large earth-movers, bulldozers, and cranes hover about, awaiting a signal from the maestro. As a practical matter, assembling "Thel" is like installing a sewer system, an analogy that is not lost on many self-proclaimed art critics.

The sculpture was built in sections at Pepper's 14th-century castle-turned-metalworks in Italy, and then shipped in a 40-foot container to Hanover. Here, the massive polished and painted steel segments were tentatively buried at the site, awaiting the artist's critical eye.

Pepper views monumental sculpture as a mediator between man and the environment, and therefore she does much of her creative work "in situ," to the bafflement of her crew. Her hope is to integrate the environment into the work's concept, and her sculptures for AT&T's headquarters, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, and a Dallas shopping complex, among others, all are designed to make the casual observer experience the surroundings in a more vivid way. Nature, says Pepper, has to supply the final element in the creation.

"Art on the whole is unexplainable," muses Pepper during a moment of relaxation, and most Dartmouth students would not quibble with the statement. Yet, for many people "Thel" has quietly succeeded in fulfilling its stated purpose: taking the spectator from viewing to experiencing - and then to feeling. Painted a shiny white, "Thel" is meant to reflect and blend into its surroundings, rather than dramatically confront them. In making the sculpture for Dartmouth, Pepper included the winter in her design: The triangular shapes will sit peacefully under the snow to re-emerge and mirror the-spring come April.

Campus reaction, as the artist happily notes, grows more positive as the project nears completion. Some find "Thel," which was paid for by the Fairchild Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, to be an imposition of the avant garde on a perfectly nice strip of grass, and speak of relocating it in West Lebanon. "Art is stretching and learning," replies Pepper to this criticism, "it should be disturbing." There are also less esoteric objections: "Thel" usurped most of "Wheeler Beach," one of Dartmouth's favorite resort spots. Pepper takes exception to this charge as well: "I didn't take their beach, I gave them deck chairs. They should have kept it a parking lot [an earlier function of the "beach" site] and then everybody would have thanked me." But, however slowly, acceptance and even applause mount for "Thel." In an editorial, TheDartmouth enthuses, "It is a rare work of art which allows the viewer to relax in its surroundings." "Thel" has become a meeting spot of sorts - the open spaces and triangular shapes have a subtle allure, and provide a first-class obstacle course for frisbee enthusiasts.

In a speech introducing "Thel" to the College, Pepper describes the piece: "It's about reaching and soaring . . . about questions that lead to answers that lead to questions." She generously adds that it seemed appropriate in front of Fairchild, where those questions are asked all the time."

Beverly Pepper brought inher own construction crewand some heavy equipmentto create "Thel." The 140-foot finished sculpture appears foreshortened in thelong-lens view below.

Beverly Pepper brought inher own construction crewand some heavy equipmentto create "Thel." The 140-foot finished sculpture appears foreshortened in thelong-lens view below.