2023

The Annual Bridges and Connections Sculpture Symposium

brings global artists together to collaborate, learn and create.

Each Symposium adds new works to the hill.

2023

Symposium

Theme:

TIME

 

Select each artist’s image to click through

samples of their work.

Scroll down for 2023 events, and to view the

artists from 2022 and symposium history.

 

Ivona Biocic Mandic

Croatia

Finn Cossar

Australia

Ted Castro

Massachusetts

2023

Symposium

Events

September 16, 1:00 pm        Opening Ceremony ♦ Welcome Center ♦ Public Invited ♦ Free

                                                               Keynote Speaker Adele Bauman, Director, NH State Council on the Arts

September 23, 3:00 pm       Symposium Artist Showcase ♦ Welcome Center ♦ Public Invited ♦ Free ♦

                                                               The three artists will provide presentations of their portfolios and careers

September 23, 5:00 pm       Dinner with Symposium Artists ♦ Catered BBQ from The Alamo ♦ Tickets Here

                                                                Seating Begins at 4:30 pm upstairs in the Welcome Center, Tickets $29pp

September 29, 6:00 pm       Dinner with Symposium Artists ♦ Lobster Dinner from Pasta Loft ♦ Tickets Here

                                                                Welcome Center Doors Open at 5:10 pm, Tickets $38pp

September 30, 4-7:00pm     Cedi’s Tasty Treats Food Truck Available to the public and park visitors.

                                                                Enjoy your food upstairs in the Welcome Center to the sounds of                                                                                    kNowhere Kids. Bring an instrument & join the jam session!

October 7, 3:00 pm               Panel Discussion: Art in the Public Sphere. Moderator Mark Favermann                                                                                     Panelists John Weidman, David Phillips, David Wackell

                                                                Welcome Center ♦ Public Invited ♦ Free

October 8, 1:00 pm                 Closing Ceremony ♦ Studio ♦ Public Invited ♦ Free

                                                                View the three new works in place along the trails

                                                                Shuttle available b/t parking & Studio

 

 

The 12 miles of trails of the AIA with over 100 sculptures are open daily, dawn to dusk, free to the public.

View the pieces underway at the Studio, best viewing is Mon-Fri between Sept 24 – Oct 4.

The Welcome Center is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 am – 4 pm throughout the Symposium with the Visitor Information Center, wifi and restrooms.

 

Moderator: Mark Favermann, sculptor, art critic, urban designer

Artist Panelists: David Phillips, sculptor and site-specific artist of large-scale pieces; Andrew Spahr, past head curator, Currier Museum of Art; Pamela Tarbell, curator, jurorist and painter; David Wackell, Anna Maria College, Dept. of Art & Design.

Get an inside perspective on developing, exhibiting and jurying public art. Each panelist will present samples of their work followed by questions from the Moderator and public Q&A. The event is free  and the public is encouraged to attend.

Each of the 2022 Symposium artists was interviewed at the end of the process.

View each interview using the buttons.

Symposium t-shirts and a new AIA shirt are now available with proceeds supporting the AIA.

The shirts were selected with fair-trade and eco-friendly production in mind, reflecting the AIA’s commitment to the environment.

The off-white shirt has the symposium logo on the front and is $20. The other shirts have the AIA logo on the left-chest and the main design on the back and are $30. The blue shirts feature men’s and women’s styles.

The shirts and AIA Stickers are now available in the online store! Click HERE or use the STORE tab in the menu above.

2022 Symposium Artists

Dankha Zomaya

was born in Syria where he earned a degree in fine arts from the University of Damascus. Before moving to Chicago, Zomaya taught at different schools and colleges for over twenty years.

He has displayed his work in over twenty-two solo exhibitions and many other joint exhibitions in Canada,  United States, Bulgaria, Sweden, and the Middle East. His work is obtained by private collectors, the National Museum of Damascus (The Modern Art Gallery of  Damascus), the Syrian Department of Culture, and many galleries in different countries. Zomaya’s research in art was followed by many plastic art students and researchers inside and outside of Syria. 

View more of his work here.      

Lee Wright

is a fearless printmaker and painter based in the Brecon Beacons in South Wales.

After a long career in IT in London  he made a change to study printmaking at Putney School of Art,

His Lino prints are aimed in capturing the beauty and tranquility of the landscape too.  He works out of a studio in Cwmdu in a converted Victorian school alongside other gifted artists.

 “Every moment of every day the light and the effect it has on the scenery changes. I try to capture some of these moments in my Lino prints.”

He moved to South Wales in 2009 where he was inspired by his new surroundings to paint the landscape.

He trained in oil painting at The Welsh Academy of Art. In his artwork,  Lee paints using techniques handed down from the masters such as Rembrandt, whilst his Lino prints have an essence of the delicate and beautiful Japanese woodblock prints of the past with a nod of the ever-popular Vintage Railway Prints.

 He works and teaches in his studios near Crickhowell in a converted Victorian School. View more of his work.

Sam Finkelstein

was born in New York City, and currently lives in Rockland, Maine. His work centers on the human body as the link between the psychic states of everaccelerating metropolitan centers and those of more time-expansive pastoral landscapes. This exploration manifests in sculpted stone, poetry, drawings, and music. Finkelstein is interested in his work primarily registering on a nonverbal level – something rooted in a primordial, energetic collective knowledge that we share with plants, trees, fellow animals, and the heavenly bodies of the cosmos. View more of his work at Sculpture Party

The Symposium

The Andres Institute of Art was founded in 1998 by sculptor John Weidman and philanthropist Paul Andres. The first symposium was held in 1999. Seven artists were invited to come to Brookline for two weeks to create sculptures which would be placed on permanent display on the mountain. Sculptors from Lithuania, Latvia, England, Czech Republic, Ukraine, New Hampshire and Vermont attended this first symposium and stayed with local volunteer families.

As the sculptures were completed, volunteers moved them from the studio to the sites using heavy equipment. When the sculptors headed home, seven new sculptures had been placed on the mountain. One of them, Phoenix, is to this day the largest work in the sculpture park; it is 15 feet tall and weighs about 11 tons.

The symposium format proved a great success. Since that time, the Institute has held the event annually, welcoming three to five artists to work their craft within a new theme selected for each symposium. The sculptors continue to stay with local hosts and share meals provided by volunteers. They receive a small stipend for participation but the real rewards are to create as they choose, to learn from other sculptors and to choose the location for their work to be enjoyed. As a result of the collective effort from these gifted artists, we now have over 100 thought-provoking original works of art nestled along walking trails on the mountain in our 140 acre sculpture park.

After a two-year hiatus the Symposium will return in 2022 with the theme of: “Catch ’22”. We invite you to attend over the symposium period to meet the artists and watch them at work to follow the evolution of raw material to sculptural works.

Symposium 2022

The

Symposium

Gallery

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

 

– Michelangelo

Sculpture Park Entrance &

Visitor Center

106 Route 13, Brookline, NH 03033

Call or Mail

(603) 673-7441  (8am-5pm)

Andres Institute of Art, PO Box 226, Brookline, NH 03033-0226

Email

Kristi St. Laurent, AIA President

President@andresinstitute.org