Hugh Townley

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Artist Statement:

After 58 years of making sculpture I find that it is a pursuit I cannot avoid. I look at it with curiosity. I am frequently surprised by the way it works.

The fall and winter landscapes of western Wisconsin and Colorado, matters of form, have been of continuing importance to me ever since I first walked them.

The staunch clarity of some typefaces and designs of some books and posters have moved me greatly.

What I read and have read are sources of many ideas I’ve used: science fiction, anthropology, poetry.
Travel: towns and deserts, New York City, Paris, Amsterdam, Rio, Cuzco, Los Angeles, Boston, Mojave, Oregon, Nazca; roadways and air views, all in the company of rare people and always in a state of wonder, lead me to my sculpture.

I have been to Southern India ten times, have delved into its history, cultures, and the Hindu religion in particular. The persistence of the color there is extraordinary.

For the last 30 years most of my work has been relief sculpture. In some cases I used mixed woods – mahogany, walnut, cherry, ash, maple, obiche and ebony. In others the sculpture is made from one kind of wood, monochromatic. More recently I have painted my reliefs in brilliant, glossy colors in which sheen and shadow are a big part of the act. I’m presently working with plywood reliefs. The layering of the plywood with its black glue lines and rhythmical repeat patterns plus its physical versatilities and handsome flatness intrigues me. It has the advantage of being a lighter weight wood, which is increasingly important to me. Almost all my sculpture has been made with band saws using narrow 1/16 th and 1/4 inch blades, which allow immediacy and great facility with the wood. These saws have become the backbone of my approach to the forms I seek, and to the textures and subtle linear boundary-like character of my sculpture.

I found the band saw in my twenties and have been inventing with it ever since.

The following poem by Kalidasa Sakunta, (translated from the Sanscrit by W.S. Merwin) says something more about me and the mode in which I live and work.


Even the man who is happy
glimpses something
or a hair of sound touches him

and his heart overflows with a longing
he does not recognize

then it must be that he is remembering
in a place out of reach
shapes he has loved

in a life before this
the print of them still there in him waiting


I work in as direct a fashion as I can. I rush into some ideas.
Sometimes I rush out again. As each piece becomes more ordered my
studio becomes more disordered. Then, look I’m done! Committed to each new work as it is, and above all to another, and more besides. Surely
there is no end.

—Hugh Townley
Bethel, Vermont June 2006

Biography:

Hugh Townley, Professor Emeritus of Art at Brown University, is a sculptor who has taught and made art since 1952. He’s still at work with his wood, band saws, glue and high gloss paints in his studio in a quiet Vermont crossroads town on the White River.

He works primarily with wood but also has made monumental outdoor works in concrete. His sculptures are intricate assemblages of band saw-cut shapes – reliefs and free standing works – towers, chains, boxes, “nests” – using a variety of common and rare woods – teak, oak, mahogany, ebony, obiche, rosewood, walnut. One is always conscious of the mass of the wood and the energy of the work regardless of scale, which can be monumental, miniature or anything between, There is a recurring, imaginative, often whimsical iconography of forms from nature – trees and fronds, reptiles, human figures and parts, symbols: hearts, crosses, arcs and arrows – evocative of eastern spiritualism. The grain of the wood, marks left by the saw and other natural imperfections inform the design. Some later reliefs have color on selected surfaces and some are painted in vibrant colors. Most of his recent work has been with plywood, creating intricately interlocking designs of which he says, “The layering of the plywood with its black glue lines and rhythmical repeat patterns plus its physical versatilities, glue-ability and handsome flatness intrigue me.” Currently he is experimenting with painting the plywood.

Townley has had over thirty one-man exhibitions in major museums and galleries, and has been represented in over fifty group shows. In 1972 he received the Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, in Providence, RI. Among other honors, he was a Fellow at the Yaddo Foundation (1964) and at the Tamarind Foundation for Lithography (1969). He was honored by the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1967), and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1980), was given a one-man show at the St. Gaudens Historical Site in 2002 and was included in the National Academy exhibition in New York City in 2004.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fogg Museum of Harvard University; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Rhode Island School of Design; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Dartmouth College; the Milwaukee Art Center; the DeCordova Museum, Lincoln MA; the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in Forth Worth, Texas; the San Francisco Museum of Art, among others; and it is in thirty-two private collections.

He has done major installations for Brown University; The Fay School in Southborough, Massachusetts; Eugene, Oregon; the State of Kentucky Comprehensive Training Center; and American Airlines Admirals Club in Luis Muñoz Airport, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Hugh Townley was born in Lafayette, Indiana. At the age of 19 he enlisted in the U. S. Army and served in Europe for three years until the end of World War II. Back in the U.S. in 1945 he enrolled in the Fine Arts program at the University of Wisconsin. One of his teachers suggested that he study with Ossip Zadkine in Paris, which he did. That experience and his subsequent year working for the Marshall Plan in The Hague, gave him extraordinary breadth of experience in the post World War II art world. The sculpture he produced during this period earned him his first one-man show. After further studies in Paris and London he returned to the United States in 1952 and, beginning at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, embarked on a distinguished teaching career which included posts at Beloit College and Boston University, before he began teaching at Brown University in 1961. After his retirement from Brown as Professor Emeritus in 1989, he and his late wife, the artist and writer Mary Ross Townley, moved to a house on the White River in Bethel, Vermont. The work he produces there maintains its power to surprise and enchant.

Townley’s vision evolves continually, but his sculpture remains both deeply personal and instantly recognizable. With few exceptions the works are of wood, a material with its own distinct voice, which nevertheless accepts and expresses this artist’s unique language. The apparently abstract forms often suggest an organic and/or symbolic vocabulary, which finds its source, in part, in Townley’s extensive studies of anthropology, eastern philosophies, and Native American culture. At the same time, an inventive and individual wit is never far from the surface. All the work, from the monumental concrete pieces to the small, intricate Altoid boxes, extend the same invitation; they lend themselves readily to exploration and interpretation.

Vitae:

Sculptor, Printmaker
Professor of Art Emeritus, Brown University

Enlisted in the United States Army, 1942. Served until 1945 in the European Theater, (England, France, Belgium and Germany)

Education
University of Wisconsin 1946-1948 - Major – Fine Arts; Minor – Cultural Anthropology
Studied with Ossip Zadkine, Paris, 1948-49. Worked in clay, wood, and stone. bronze.
London County Council School of Arts and Crafts 1949-51. Studied mural painting with Victor Pasmore.

Degree: Master of Arts, Brown University (ad eundem gradum), 1964

Commissions
1991 Relief “Lunar Migration,” Luis Muñoz Airport, American Airlines Admirals Club, San Juan, PR
1979 Providence, RI: design and supervision for construction of 14 benches for central mall
1978 The Faye School, Southborough, MA: three concrete pieces
1974 Northwest Sculpture Advocates, Inc., Eugene OR : Eleven concrete pieces
1972 State of Kentucky Comprehensive Training Center, Somerset, KY : Three concrete pieces
1970 Brown University, Providence, RI – Class of ’65: Three concrete pieces
1955 Milwaukee YMCA: Bronze cross

Selected One- and two-man Exhibitions (from 40+)
2005 Chaplin Gallery, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont “Sculpture by Hugh Townley
2004 T.W. Wood Gallery, Vermont College, Montpelier, VT, “Retrospective, Introspective, Prospective” sculpture
2004 Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, CT, with Edward Koren
2002 Saint Gaudens National Historic Site, Picture Gallery, Cornish, New Hampshire; Sculpture Exhibition dedicated to the memory of Mary Ross Townley
1991 Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Main Gallery , sculpture
1989 Milwaukee Art Center, University of Wisconsin, sculpture
1981 Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA
1980 Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
1980 State University of New York, Albany
1976 University of Oregon, Eugene
1972 Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA
1972 Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI
1971 Brockton Art Museum, Brockton, MA, with Robert Newman
1969 DeCordova Dana Museum, Lincoln, MA
1966 Yale University, New Haven, CT
1965, 1964, 1962 Pace Gallery, Boston
1964 Pace Gallery, New York, NY.
1964 University of Connecticut
1951 Gallerie Appollinaire, London, England

Selected Group Exhibitions (from more than 60)
2004-2005 DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts, “Abstract Elements: The Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett Collection of Art”, an exhibition of selected works from the 2003 bequest
2004 National Academy of Design, 179th Annual Exhibition, an invitational exhibition, New York, New York
2002 Studio 18 Gallery, New York, N.Y., “Gallerie Huit, American Artists in Paris 1950-52”
1990 Brown University, Bell Gallery, Providence, RI, “Informed Images,” Brown Faculty Show.
1985 Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA, “Forms in Wood, American Sculpture of the 1950’s”
1983 State University of New York, Albany, “American Sculptors’ Lithographs”
1977 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
1970 Munson-Williams-Proctor Museum, Utica, NY, “Contemporary American Print Exhibition, ‘Tamarind: A Renaissance of Lithography’ ”
1967 National Institute of Arts & Letters at American Academy of Arts & Letters, New York, NY
1966-67 “Art in the Embassies,” a two-year travelling exhibition
1955 Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., “New Talent,” with Ben Rimo, Tyler
1950-52 Gallerie Huit, American Artists in Paris

Selected Public Collections (from 38)
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Art Institute of Chicago
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, TX
Kalamazoo Art Center, MI
Milwaukee Art Center, WI
San Francisco Museum of Art War Memorial Civic Center
Tamarind Lithograph Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
Brown University, Providence, RI
Harvard University, Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, MA
Dartmouth College, Main Gallery, Hanover, NH
Boston University
Tufts University
Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, RI

Honors, Awards, and Fellowships – a selection
National Academy of Design, New York,, New York, selected for inclusion in 179th Annual Exhibition, May 5-June 30, 2004.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, Grant for Creative Work in Art 1980
Oregon Sculpture Symposium, Eugene, OR, 1974
Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, Providence, RI, 1972
Tamarind Lithography Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, Fellow; completed 56 lithographs in two months, one on stainless steel; 1969
National Institute of Arts and Letters, Grant for Creative work in Art, 1967
Silvermine Art Guild, 1966
Rhode Island Arts Festival, 1962, 1965
Yaddo Foundation, Saratoga Springs, New York, Fellow; produced thirty-five multi-colored wax pastel drawings in one month, 1964
Kalamazoo Art Center, Michigan – selected as one of a group of about twenty artists without experience in the graphic arts; given a week’s exposure to lithography and printing; produced eight short editions, 1964
Berkshire, Massachusetts Art Association Annual, 1961
Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors Society, 1952, 1956, 1957
San Francisco Salon of Art, 1953
Wisconsin Salon of Art, 1951, 1954

Travel
Haiti, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, England, France, Holland and India

Professional Positions - a selection
Brown University, Providence, RI, Professor of Art, Sculpture and Drawing, 1961-1989
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Artist-in-Residence, 1991
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Member of Visiting Committee 1987
Museum of Northern Arizona: Seminar on wood as an art material, 1977; Symposium on 20th Century Sculpture, 1978
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, Member of Visiting Committee, 1968
University of California at Santa Barbara, Special Session on Sculpture, 1968
Harvard University, Basic Design, 1967
University of California at Berkeley, Special Session on Sculpture,1961
Boston University, Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Drawing, 1957-61
Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin, Assistant Professor of Sculpture, 1956-7
Layton School of Art, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Instructor in Sculpture, Drawing, Industrial Design 1952-56.
Curator
George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat” Exhibition, Brown University 1984
Exhibition – “Some Photographic Uses of Color,” Brown University, 1984

Other Employment
The Marshall Plan, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1949. Guard; did illustrations for their publications and designed furniture for the Director of Information.

Service
Howard Foundation – Reader, 1986
Boston Museum School, Visiting Committee, 1969-77
Carpenter Art Center, Harvard University, President’s Ad Hoc Committee, 1974
State University of New York, Albany – Member Committee for Evaluations of Tenure, 1976; Tenure Committee, 1985; Visiting Critic/Graduate Division, 1983 & 1988
University of Washington, Seattle – Member Tenure Committee, 1976-77
Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT – Member Tenure Committee, 1976-77; 1988
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence – Member Committee for Evaluation of RISD Sculpture Department, 1977
University of Houston Art Department, Houston, Texas, Member Tenure Committee, 1983

Publications
The Invisible Volcano, by James Schevill, illustrations by Hugh Townley, Providence, RI, Copper Beech Press, 1985
Art Synectics, by Nicholas Roukes, Worcester, MA, Davis Publications, 1982
Masters of Wood Sculpture, by Nicholas Roukes, New York, Watson Guptill, 1980
Review in Art in America, by Fred Licht , 1980
Review in Art New England, 1980
Short Story, in Anthem of the Artist, edited by Wayne Green, 1979
“New England Sculptors Portfolio,” Tom Connor, Printer, 1978
Haitian Elegy, by James Schevill, Illustrations by Hugh Townley, Providence, RI, Copper Beech Press 1975
Creating Small Wood Objects as Functional Sculpture, by Dona Z. Meilach, New York, Crown Publishers, 1971
Art Now, Cover by Hugh Townley, Anyart, Providence, RI 1976
Artistry in Wood, by Vincent Hayes, New York, Drake Publishers, 1972
A History of American Art, by George M. Cohen, New York, Dell Publishing Co., 1971.