Thanks to the generosity of Rowan College at Burlington County, and the work of the Haddonfield Outdoor Sculpture Trust, the borough is set to become the resting place for five more artistic creations.
One of the bunch, entitled “Unity,” has already been installed, during the week of Oct. 8, across from the Haddonfield PATCO station. It is a 1,000-pound-plus abstract corten steel sculpture by Palestinian-Arab-Israeli sculptor Hanna Jubran.
“It was assembled from two 500-pound pieces that had to be put together. And then, it had to be cleaned and erected. It was an awful lot of work; we had to do some mini-scaffolding to erect it, then we had to pour a concrete base,” said HOST chairman Stuart Harting.
“It’s going to be there for quite a while. We don’t know how long, but it will adorn that section of Kings Highway.”
The sculptures found their way here under serendipitous circumstances. HOST vice-chairman Michael Willmann, who was teaching at Rowan, learned that the university was going to decommission its Pemberton campus. Approximately one year ago, he asked the university if the borough could make use of sculptures located on its campus. This past summer, the trust met with representatives from Rowan, and they eventually agreed to donate five pieces.
“They were all purchased by Rowan many years ago, Burlington County College actually. This was before Rowan took them over. We’re very happy to get them. They were delivered here just two weeks ago,” Harting explained.
“We are hoping over the next two months to install, throughout town, several of the other four pieces. We have three companion pieces called ‘The Three States of Being,’ which are pyramidal towers, 10 feet tall, each with a filigree base, and made of steel. We’ve had discussions with two religious organizations which may have an interest in having these on their property, because they can also be considered the Trinity.”
At the time of the interview, Harting declined to disclose which particular houses of worship expressed interest, because no firm decisions have been made yet on their final installation point.
With these recent additions, HOST will eventually preside over 10 separate installations in 2019 – the other five being “Ballerina,” the three bronze animals at the childrens’ sculpture zoo and “My Dog Blue.”
“This has been our biggest year. It’s been very intense, it’s an awful lot of work, and our board has been very helpful in doing all these things. I couldn’t do it without them,” Harting said.
Harting added the trust is going to do its best by the end of the calendar year to have the remaining four donated pieces in place.
“That’s the goal we have; our schedule has some other work for early next year but again, that’s not definite. This will probably bring our total placements in town up to 25. It’s been a great experience. It’s a passion, which makes the whole thing go,” he said.
For more information about the coming additions to Haddonfield’s artistic milieu and about the trust itself, visit https://haddonfieldsculpture.org/.
