Bronze pour; Green Foundry at Sanctuary Arts, Eliot Maine.

About the artists

After conducting a nationwide search, the Commission selected a distinguished Maine-based artist team - Christopher Gowell of Eliot and Steven Carpenter from York.

Christopher Gowell

Christopher Gowell Christopher Gowell has been sculpting the figure for 40 years. She earned her BFA from the University of New Hampshire (where she later taught figure sculpture) and her MFA in Sculpture from Boston University. In 1997 she bought an old Methodist Church in Eliot, Maine, five minutes from downtown Portsmouth, N.H., and began Sanctuary Arts School And Sculpture Center. This has become a vibrant arts facility with as many as 20 art classes offered to adults, 7 artist studios, a sculpture studio for creating large scale pieces and Green Foundry at Sanctuary Arts, a bronze, aluminum and iron casting foundry run by casting specialists Josh Dow and Lauren Holmgren.

Christopher has two bronze large-scale public pieces to her credit, a Firefighter's Memorial seven foot by eight foot bronze cast relief with memorial plaques for Manchester, N.H., and a six foot bronze three-dimensional sculpture of an 1870's French Canadian millworker and her son-"La Dame de notre Renaissance Francaise" for Nashua NH's canal waterfront. She also sculpted a tidal pool relief for the Seacoast Science Center in Rye, N.H., as a percent for Arts commission. She is a member of the National Sculpture Society, New England Sculpture Association, Ogunquit Artists Collaborative, Maine Sculptors, and The Carving Studio. Her work can be viewed at Bowersock Gallery in Provincetown MA and on her website: www.christophergowell.com.

Christopher, an ardent arts proselytizer and sculptor, has the sculpting and management skills, facilities and track record to create a successful Fishermen's Monument for Portland. Her sculpting studio was designed specifically to handle large-scale commissions. Green Foundry, her bronze casting facility at Sanctuary Arts, is perfect for community access and education as this project goes forward.

Last year a new Sculpture Garden at Sanctuary Arts was officially opened to the public, designed and planted by artist Judy Andrews, to showcase and sell the work of fine New England sculptors.

Steven Alden Carpenter

Steven Alden Carpenter Originally from Northern Illinois, Steven Alden Carpenter has lived in York, Maine for 15 years.

He came to art at an early age. Beginning as a graphic artist and free-lance illustrator, he then combined his artistic sensibilities with physical labor and created the stonescaping and garden design business, "Standing Stone" which he has fostered over the last 14 years. He says "I will always love the process that stone-walling involves, but when I found sculpting I knew I had found my calling in art".

Through the stonework, Steven was able to learn about three dimensional forms and texture. He also learned how the body functions and feels while in movement. These are all elements that he now applies to his sculpture. His work tends to be representational and figurative and is usually cast in bronze. He has always been interested in the human figure and the human condition. They provide a never ending source of narrative and form that he continues to explore. Emotional content, along with dynamic composition combine in Steven's figure sculptures to bring attention to the beauty and complexities of human endeavor.

Steven's sculpture is now being represented at the Bowersock Gallery in Provincetown, Mass., and has shown at the Portsmouth Museum of Fine Arts, and at the Barn Gallery in Ogunquit, Maine, for the past two summers. He is a member of the New England Sculpture Association and his work has been featured in several publications including Artscope Magazine, Accent Magazine, and the Portsmouth Herald.