Unveiling ~ Thursday, June 3rd, 5:30pm
Location: Gloucester Brewing Company
Join renowned sculptor, Jay Lagemann, on a hunt of his sculptures along Main Street in the Gloucester Village. Walk along Main Street as each sculpture is unveiled and learn the story and inspiration behind each one. Ask questions and enjoy! Afterwards, join us back at the Gloucester Brewing Company for a beer that is themed to the Arts Festival! Socialize and take your Instagram pic with the sculpture on site.
Free and open to the public
About The Sculptor
More than half a century. That’s how long Jay Lagemann has been making sculpture in Martha’s Vineyard. In fact, you can see his work everywhere from galleries to public spaces and even his home, where he’s transformed the land around his house and studio into an ever-evolving Wild Island Sculpture Park.
Drawing on an academic career as a mathematician – he earned his Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Lagemann has always loved making things and fell in love with art while traveling through Europe as a teenager.
He grew increasingly fascinated by how sculpture works in the outdoors and especially in the interaction between the sculpture and its environment over time.
While clay has become his favored medium, with most of his clay pieces made in the warm tones of terracotta and stoneware, he is most widely known for creating animated, playful characters from metal. His most famous work includes the 17-foot tall Swordfish Harpooner that stands amidst the dunes in Menemsha commissioned for Chilmark’s tri-centennial in 1994.
He also created the monumental bronze Swinging Jenny, of which an 18-foot by 22-foot version is publicly on display in New York City.
Little do many moviegoers know, but Lagemann worked as part of the special effects crew for the movie JAWS 2, where he learned how to “make just about anything. That came in handy because one day, sitting in the Sculpture Park at the Hirshorn Museum, I had a vision of creating the Wild Island Sculpture Park on my land in Chilmark.”
Lagemann works with a variety of materials because, as he says, he views “almost everything as sculpture, from the placement of driftwood on the beach to the building of my own house and studios.”
