George Sherwood’s kinetic sculptures invite us to observe, experience, contemplate and engage more fully in the natural world around us. His intricate and innovatively designed works explore aesthetic systems of space, time, and the dynamic relationships of objects in motion. The choreography of each piece is governed by a set of basic movements, facilitated by an arrangement of aerodynamic surfaces connected by rotational points. The Artist Book Foundation is pleased to present George Sherwood: Wind, Waves, and Light, the first monograph on this award-winning artist’s lustrous, subtly transformative works.
Featuring 100 sculptures from Sherwood’s early whimsical explorations to his monumental commissions that have graced private and public gardens, city sites, and exhibition spaces around the world, readers will witness how changing winds, shades of light, times of day, precipitation, and the seasons’ changing colors alter the sculptures, animate their surroundings, and ignite the imagination. Sherwood’s sculptures are often made of stainless steel, a reflective material that serves to integrate the works into the unique and often transient light of their environments.
Based in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Sherwood has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions including the Currier Museum, Manchester, New Hampshire; Saint Gauden’s National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire; The Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Katonah Museum, in Katonah, New York. In 2007 he was awarded the Lillian Heller Award for Contemporary Art at Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. His works can be found in the permanent collections of The Currier Museum; The Dana Farber Cancer Institute 20th and 21st century Contemporary Art Collection in Boston, Massachusetts; the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine, the Atlanta Botanical Garden in Atlanta, Georgia; and the Contemporary Sculpture Path at the Forest Hills Educational Trust in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Specializing in sculpture inspired by nature, June LaCombe is an independent arts consultant representing a selection of New England artists. She has curated and sited exhibitions in Maine for over thirty years and helped clients throughout the country build their art collections. Belinda Rathbone is a biographer, historian, and fine arts journalist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Walker Evans: A Biography; The Guynd: A Scottish Journal; The Boston Raphael; and George Rickey: A Life in Balance. American sculptor George Sherwood, with degrees in both art and engineering, explores aesthetic systems of space and time, as well as the dynamic interplay of objects in motion.

Contents: 9
Foreword | June LaCombe: 11
George Sherwood: A Delicate Balance | Belinda Rathbone: 15
Wind, Waves, and Light | George Sherwood: 35
Plates: 43
Chronology: 161
Exhibition History And Collections: 169
Acknowledgments: 173
Credits: 176

You will think that you have seen a George Sherwood sculpture but you will be mistaken. You will not have seen it, not truly seen it, until you have experienced it in its extraordinary variation. You must see it in all seasons, at all times of day, in all winds and weathers, at dawn and dusk, in the green of spring and the snows of winter, at rest, in light breeze, strong wind and violent gust, in rain and mist, in ice and snow and fog, flashing in the sun against a brilliant blue sky or a backdrop of storm clouds. Until you have seen the sculpture and absorbed its marvelous variation within and across these changing conditions, you will not have seen it. . . .
Sherwood is a kinetic sculptor. Movement, as much as stainless steel, is his medium. This lofty space has the adequate amount of air and light for him to work in, for air is the engine of his art, and light is the source of its color. A circle made up of countless hand-cut stainless-steel shapes is fastened to one wall, alive with a gentle pulse, like the breathing of a sleeping animal. A small breeze from an open window ruffles its many shades of gray. Outside, another circle, made up of thousands of stainless-steel squares on a grid, rocks on its post while a flurry of tiny movements sweeps across its surface, like a cloud passing over the sea. He calls it Wave Cloud.