For the week of January 9 - 15, 2002

Glenna Goodacre brings life to bronze

---

By ADAM TANOUS
Express Arts Editor

Strolling by the Kneeland Gallery in Ketchum, one might do a double-take at a women stretching in the snow. She is, in fact, made of bronze—a new addition to the wealth of sculpture about town.

“Park Place” by Glenna Goodacre.

 

The piece is the work of Glenna Goodacre, a new member to the stable of fine artists associated with Ketchum galleries.

Goodacre is a sculptor of national prominence, perhaps best known for her creation of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project on the Mall in Washington, D.C. She also designed the new gold dollar coin featuring the image of Sacagawea—the Shoshone interpreter and guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1804 to 1806.

Goodacre’s latest and biggest project is to create the Irish Memorial in Philadelphia to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the Irish famine. The work is to be 12 feet high, 25 feet long, 12 feet wide and includes 25 life-size figures. It will be installed in a park in the Penn’s Landing district of Philadelphia in the spring of 2002.

Goodacre has created more than 40 bronze portraits held in public collections, including those of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Katherine Anne Porter and Scott Joplin.

A native of Lubbock, Texas, Goodacre went to Colorado College, where she majored in art. Her art career, however, was put on hold while she married and raised children. When the children were 3 and 4 years old, she got back on track and attended the Art Students League in New York. In an interview last year for the publication Art of the West, Goodacre said, "That was a turning point for me, to see people actually serious about their work." Up until then, she had concentrated on painting only.

In 1974 she moved to Boulder, Colo., and tried her hand at sculpting. Little by little sculpting took up her energies. Many of her pieces were subsequently picked up by buyers who had passed on her paintings. Goodacre now shows in 10 galleries nationwide, including Kneeland Gallery in Ketchum.

She does most of her work at her current studio and home in Santa Fe, N.M.

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.