2024

The Annual Bridges and Connections Sculpture Symposium

brings global artists together to collaborate, learn and create.

Each Symposium adds new works to the hill.

2024

Symposium

 

Plans are underway for the 2024 Symposium. The

dates are September 14 – October 6.

Come back to see more of the events and artist 

information as plans come together.

 

2023

Symposium

Theme:

TIME

 

Select each artist’s image to click through

samples of their work.

Scroll further to view the

artists from 2022 and symposium history.

 

Ivona Biocic Mandic

Croatia

Finn Cossar

Australia

Ted Castro

Massachusetts

2023

Symposium Sculptures

Unveiling

Closing Ceremony, October 2023

The audience gathered to hear from the artist and to get their first official view of Ivona Biocic Mandic’s work in its permanent setting.

Ivona Biocic Mandic

Ivona’s work is melding in with the surroundings several months into incorporation into the permanent display at the Andres. The two pieces in the foreground are created for sitting on and for touching. In the background, on the right in this photo, is Grounded Cloud. The surfaces have many different subtle textures chosen with care to create a tactile, as well as a visual, experience.

Finn Cossar

Finn Cossar’s piece is directly related to the theme for 2023, “Time”. In space, large masses warp time. The large stone shows a warping effect on time represented by the iron grid base. In the same way, outsized events or circumstances can change the course and shape of our lives.

Photo by Ted Castro

Temporal in Snow

Once established on the Hill, sculptures endure the weather. As the landscape changes with the seasons, the sculptures can be appreciated in new ways.

Ted Castro

Impregnable embodies the fullness of Time – the theme for the 2023 Symposium – in this sculpture by Ted Castro. The figure also depicts two contrasting concepts eoncompassed in the title – fertile and invincible.

Impregnable

While the sculptures are inspiring to view and experience on a beautiful sunny day, clouds and rain can up the drama and even bring out details not seen in dry conditions.

Image by Dave Pease

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