Silver Woman Graces Wildwood

Her name is “Vita Nova,” and her new home is the Wildwood campus of St. Louis Community College. She is 8.5 feet tall, held together with rivets and constructed of hammered aluminum that reflects the sun. She will visit the campus for a year.

Vita Nova is the first new sculpture to be added to the college's outdoor sculpture exhibit since last fall. She was created by artist Gary Mitchell, who has been interested in welding since he was a teen.

Mitchell received his bachelor's degree from the University of California-Berkeley in 1977, and worked in the aerospace industry in Los Angeles in the 1980s. In the early 1980s he also began participating in group art shows in California, and later showing in exhibitions in Arizona, Illinois, Colorado and Arizona. In 1998 he received his master's degree from the University of California-Santa Barbara, and since 2003 he has been self-employed as a sculptor.

“I’ve always been interested in welding,” said Mitchell. “I started sculpting animals, then switched to the human figure. I am inspired by ancient Greek art.”

“Aluminum doesn’t allow you to shape things. It forces things to be cylindrical. And so the construction process affects the design in a more pronounced way than other media,” he said.

Mitchell starts at the bottom of the sculpture. Contours are formed on pieces of aluminum by hammering them on a stake plate. The individual pieces are placed on a wood frame starting at the bottom and working to the top. Once they are in place, he reverses the process and starts from the top to put the sculpture together with rivets and remove the wood. “The seams always have to be on the rounds. The design also has to be big enough for me to fit my hand inside. I use solid rivets and a bucking bar to secure them from the inside.”

The result is a stylized figure substantial in proportion. “My method of working sheets by hammering contours into them presents limitations to the forms I am able to achieve. I am limited to large and simple forms, in contrast to intricate detail. The limitations cause me to pay more attention to the proportions of the masses, of a given piece of sculpture,” said Mitchell.

Vita Nova is the first of three new additions to the campus' outdoor sculpture exhibit, a rotating art exhibit at the Wildwood campus. In addition to the new pieces, three pieces that were installed last year will remain on campus for the coming year. They are “Aspiration,” “That Wrens May Prey,” and “Chicago River Landscape.”