By the time you read this, three new works by sandwich artist David Phillips will have been installed at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. The works were all designed by Mr. Phillips in his Grove Street studio with a single piece, “Bridge”, consisting of a large metal cello bridge, currently being made in Rhode Island. The other two pieces, “Notation with Chords and String” and “Musica Universalis” were still in Mr. Phillips’ studio when I visited.
All three pieces are made possible through the generosity of the late Tony Lopes of Brookline, who contacted Mr. Phillips in 2011, offering to fund several pieces of public art.
An accomplished and award-winning sculptor, Mr. Phillips’ work can be seen in many outdoor locations, including Eastport Park in Boston, Quincy Square Park in Cambridge, Battery Park in New York, City Square Park in Charlestown and the University of Southern Maine to Portland. . In Boston, Mr. Phillips is perhaps best known for his bronze sculptures of anthropomorphic frogs that stand along Boston Common’s frog pond.
Mr. Lopes taught elementary school art in the Framingham School District for over 30 years.
“He was a popular teacher and also made his own artwork, woodcuts, paintings and drawings,” Mr Phillips said. “When he retired, he loved going to concerts and hearing orchestras, mostly classical, and he also walked around Boston, looking at public art. It turned out he had seen some of my art, and so I got a call from him saying he liked my work and “Let’s have a drink sometime”.
Having never met Mr. Lopes before this phone call, Mr. Phillips said he was a bit skeptical, but Mr. Lopes kept calling back and, eventually, the two men got together. “He basically announced that he liked my work and wanted to give me money to do a sculpture of my choice in the city of Boston,” Mr Phillips said.
The three new works are the fifth, sixth and seventh pieces resulting from this arrangement.
“What a bargain,” Mr Phillips said of Mr Lopes’ offer. “Nothing like this had ever happened to me before.”
Mr Phillips said Mr Lopes was curious but in the end ‘he let me do what I wanted’.
The first piece, installed in 2013, was called “Dancing With Spheres” and consists of a bronze statue of a “dancing” dog and cat atop a stylized tree with other animals, including a crow, a squirrel, a hare, a frog and a tortoise. surrounding them on the platform below. It is located in the Animal Rescue League’s outdoor dog park in Boston.
“We both love animals, and I found out Tony got his cats from the Animal Rescue League,” Mr Phillips said. “It’s a fun piece.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Lopes died of cancer shortly after the unveiling of “Dancing With Spheres”, but the curator at his estate contacted Mr. Phillips to let him know that Mr. Lopes had left some money for other works of art.
Mr Phillips said he approached the New England Conservatory of Music, knowing that Mr Lopes had been there to attend performances.
The three new sculptures by Mr. Phillips will all be placed in the conservatory: two indoors on the second floor of Jordan Hall and one outdoors in a small park off St. Botolph Street. The new pieces will join ‘Scrolls’, ‘Tony’s Bench’ and ‘High Notes’, all of which were installed at the conservatory in 2019, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Lopes.
“Notation With Chords and Strings” will hang on a wall inside Jordan Hall, the conservatory’s main performance space. The large rectangular work, which measures four feet high by 10 feet long, features blue and yellow laminated steel and piano strings in circular patterns, affixed to a gray panel background. Painted shadows blend with real shadows, giving the room a sense of movement and reverberation.
“The idea is completely new to me,” Mr Phillips said of the work, “The title sounds musical but it’s really a description of the structure it’s made of: cold rolled steel which is cut and welded together.”
Although it may seem random, Phillips explained that the design is actually very organized. “There is an underlying six-inch grid that you can get a sense of. It is organized along a network of squares,” he said. Mr. Phillips also explained that he tries to work with a variety of levels with the work: “It’s kind of a three-level painting, plus it’s sculptural. It was fun solving the technical problems of the part, how to build it and put it together. It looks delicate, but it’s sturdier than it looks.
With a multitude of lines and shadows, created by both the artist and a direct light source, the viewer’s eye will attempt to follow the lines that seem to vibrate. “People said he had a musical quality,” Mr Phillips said.
Mr Phillips said the piece took four months to complete.
Eight-foot tall, painted dark yellow and created from metal arranged in a woven pattern that creates a square space between weft and warp, “Bridge” will be lit from within when placed on St. Botolph, where it will be a companion piece to “Scrolls,” another metal sculpture based on the neck of a violin and lit from within.
The third new piece is a large mobile, which will also hang in Jordan Hall. It consists of rods and spheres, which are made to pass close to each other, almost, but not quite touching.
“You get all these crosses and triangles that form, and it spins and it looks like things are going to hit, but then they intersect,” Mr Phillips said.
The artist explained that the idea for the piece came from the notion of “music of the spheres”, a philosophical concept that dates back to ancient Greece and proposes that the movement of planets and other celestial bodies was a form of music. “Musica Universalis” translates to universal music.
A professional artist for over 50 years, Mr Phillips and his wife moved to Sandwich from Cambridge just before the pandemic hit.
Despite an August rental in Truro for more than 20 years, Phillips said he hasn’t made many connections in the Cape Cod art scene. “I never got involved in the galleries when we were going down. I always had a public art commission somewhere,” he said, adding that some years he took the fast ferry because he had to be in Boston.
Mr Phillips was part of the ‘All The World’s A Stage’ exhibit at the Cape Cod Museum of Art earlier this year, but since moving to Sandwich he has spent the majority of his time renovating his studio and to work on the pieces of the conservatory.
“COVID hasn’t really affected me,” Mr Phillips said. “I had a lot to do with the house and the studio. The floors were just plain wood and I had to put plasterboard.
A graduate of Columbus College of Art and Design and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Mr. Phillips grew up in Michigan and moved to Boston after completing graduate school. “I was determined not to get a so-called ‘real job’,” Mr Phillips said.
Although he worked as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, he said he never focused on tenure: “I wanted to be an artist, not a teacher. My biggest accomplishment is probably being able to do what I wanted to do.
Mr. Phillips has worked stone, granite, bronze, magnets, water features, LED lighting and more. “I have a kind of diversity,” the artist said, “but I think my work in stone is what I’m best known for.”
Mr. Phillips said his sculptures are primarily based on what interests him, but he is influenced by the people or groups commissioning the work, the site where the work will be located and the committee overseeing the work. project. “There are always adjustments to be made,” he said, “I’m not just going to do something that I like. I want to do something that they’ll like too.
“Bridge”, “Notation with Chords and Strings” and “Musica Universalis” represent the last works that Mr. Phillips will make using the resources left to him by Mr. Lopes.
Regarding the generous commission, Mr Phillips commented that “it is the power to work consistently and for a long time and maybe someone sees your work there. From an artist’s point of view, you never know.
