Art in the Round

Imagine rolling a barn, road, or field into a simple sphere. This is precisely what Burlington, Vermont, artist Lars-Erik Fisk has done with Bam Ball, Field Ball, Street Ball, Tree Ball, displayed outside the Hood Museum.

"These sculptures are just handy packages of representation," says Fisk. "I try to get the materials, the textures, essentially the raw essence of a thing into each of them." When Fisk says essence, he means just that. Each piece consists of little more than bark, wood, concrete, masonry, and sod.

Some campus art patrons, however, seemed to be a little too fixed on the roundness of the pieces. They dislodged Field Ball and rolled it across the green lawn of Wilson Hall towards the Hood's main archway. One campus wag suggested the exhibit the should be retitled "Billiard Ball." Fisk's pieces complemented the Hood's exhibition, "PostPastoral Images of the New England Landscape," a collection of paintings and sculpture addressing the pastoral tradition in New England art.

Students had a ball with Lars-Erik Fisk's New England sculpture.