News Release
Innovative Sculptures Will Transform Key Bank Plaza in Downtown Anchorage
Anchorage, Alaska – March 30, 2006 – Local artist Rachelle Dowdy has been selected to create a permanent piece of public sculpture to be donated to the city of Anchorage in conjunction with the 8th World Wilderness Congress (8th WWC), that convened in Anchorage Sept. 30 – Oct. 6, 2005. More than 1,200 delegates from 55 nations participated, including 200 individuals from Alaska encompassing native Alaskans, environmental organizations and the corporate sector. The Honorary Co-Chairs of the 8th WWC were Susan Ruddy, Governor Walter Hickel, Clem Tillion and Byron Mallott. Senior Advisors included Mead Treadwell, Larry Merculieff, Julie Kitka and other Alaskans who joined their peers from many sectors around the world.
The sculpture, a donation from The WILD Foundation (coordinator of the WWC), will be officially accepted by Mayor Mark Begich on behalf of the people of Anchorage and Alaska, on May 22, 2006, at a ceremony at the Key Bank Plaza. For this project, Dowdy created a metaphor for transformation by juxtaposing human and animal forms. The animals represented in the sculptures live or migrate through Anchorage. Dowdy had been creating concrete sculptures for a decade but feared it would make the pieces she had in mind for this project too heavy. For this project, Dowdy instead made the sculptures with ferro-concrete – created through a process of layering concrete over a frame, allowing for a hollow, lightweight structure. Dowdy’s experimentations with ferro-concrete culminated this summer with a show at The International Gallery of Art, where the Anchorage Museum of History and Art purchased “Hollow Search; Crane Women Hunts” with funds made available by the Rasmuson Foundation.
“Rachelle Dowdy’s piece was selected via juried competition in late 2004, because committee members felt it was both artistically strong and conveyed a message that the
8th WWC was bringing to Alaska – the essential interdependence of human society and wild nature,” said Vance Martin, president of the WILD Foundation and 8th WWC Executive Committee chair.
The sculptures will be located in the open plaza at 601 West First Avenue, in front of Key Bank. Dowdy said she envisions the four figures dispersed throughout the plaza to help viewers actively participate with the sculptures individually.
“It is an honor to be selected to visually represent this 8th WWC,” Dowdy said. Dowdy is a 1996 graduate of the University of Alaska Fairbanks with a bachelor’s of fine arts in sculpture and painting. She is a teacher with the Artist in School Program and has helped youth experiment with art in various schools across Anchorage.
The 8th WWC theme, “Wilderness, Wildlands, and People: A Partnership for the Planet,” was the inspiration for Dowdy’s sculptures. “What partly inspired me to submit this proposal was a recent statistic stated on the radio by a Fish and Game official: ‘75 percent of the Anchorage population loves cohabitating with the local wildlife,’” Dowdy said.
The selection committee was comprised of people with a wide range of interests from Anchorage and Alaska’s varying artistic, political, social, business and Native communities.
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