Sculpture garden unveiled at Harlow Street lot

BANGOR – She’s nude. She weighs 1,050 pounds. And, frankly, she looks a little green.

But to the small crowd gathered Tuesday morning in the new sculpture garden at Norumbega Hall, Lewis Iselin’s “Norse Sea Goddess” couldn’t be lovelier. Neither could the garden itself, which morphed from a barren parking area to an elegant landscape loaded with native plants.

“That’s the nice thing about Bangor – you have all this public art, and this is just another example of celebrating a new public art space in the city,” said Chris Shrum of Eastern Maine Development Corp., which has its offices in Norumbega Hall. “It’s a remarkable transformation.”

The goddess may be remarkable in her own right. According to Wally Mason of the University of Maine Museum of Art, which inhabits the lower level of Norumbega Hall, Iselin made anywhere from three to five castings of this work. One of them was on view in the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Since the Camden artist and his wife had both died before the museum received the sculpture, it’s impossible to tell whether or not this was the one.

“It’s pretty clear that it was a very typical, forward-thinking sculpture at the time,” Mason said.

Since her acquisition in 1999, the goddess has lacked a proper home. Instead, she has been packed away in a crate on the Orono campus. Her companion in the garden, the boldly abstract “Seward,” sat in the dark lobby of Neville Hall, also on the Orono campus. For years, students and faculty used the sculpture as a bulletin board, taping notices to its sides. Now, each piece will have its time in the sun.

“People love to hate abstraction … but [‘Seward’ is] a great piece and it’s finally sited,” said Mason, the museum’s director. “It’s a nice counter to ‘Norse Sea Goddess.’ It gives somebody something to hate and something to love, which is fine.”

Either way, it will give people something to look at from several angles. Bob Bangs of Windswept Gardens designed the landscape with the idea that many people would view it from above, as a footbridge leads to the building’s main entrance.

“As the trees grow, basically people are going to be looking through the canopy,” Bangs said, gesturing to the small red maples near the bridge. “That’s another unique aspect.”

At the ground level, a tall waterfall cascades over pink granite, and raised beds highlight native ferns, winterberries, bayberries and viburnums. Robert and Catherine Barrett of Bar Harbor donated gates to enclose the garden, while Paul Cook of Bangor painted the ironwork.

“We have quite a few plans for down here,” Bangs said.

Those plans are contingent on funding. The first phase of construction cost $43,000, which Shrum secured from the Maine Municipal Investment Trust Fund and matching donations. The second phase calls for more trees, the installation of pavers, and a heat treatment on the outdoor staircase. The treads are made of slick, polished granite, which makes them hazardous to use.

As for the sculpture portion of the garden, Mason has plans of his own.

“We talked at one time of rotating things in and out of there,” he said, noting that many sculptors who work on large-scale pieces need a temporary place to store them. “The idea of some pieces being on loan out there could be exciting, and that’s something the museum might want to pursue.”

The new sculpture garden is located at 40 Harlow St. in Bangor.