By Katy Savage, Standard Staff
There is an empty hill off exit 9 of Interstate 91 — 23 acres of open public land that could soon become an artist’s canvas.
Herb Ferris, an artist in Windsor, wants to put a statue there.
He envisions a 19-foot, U-shaped log, flanked by two eight-foot posts — a silhouette that interstate commuters would see everyday.
“I think it would become a focal point for that little bit of land,” Ferris said.
Ferris has long thought of the land — which was gifted to Hartland by the Upper Valley Land Trust.
“The critical question would be, ‘Why do anything at this site at all?’” Ferris said. “I don’t have an answer for that, it’s just what I do.”
Ferris’ work is in 14 states and Canada, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Oregon. He has sold plenty of work to private homes. If he sold the piece he wants to put in Hartland, he could get $20,000.
“I’m 71 years old and I’m more interested in making things seen out in the world,” he said. “It’s fun to have them nearby.”
He plans to put 15 pieces in places for public viewing this year — the North Universalist Chapel Society in Woodstock, the Blue Horse Inn in Woodstock and the Path of Life Sculpture Garden in Windsor are some he has in mind. His work is already at Mount Ascutney Hospital and the Vermont Institute of Natural Science.
This may not be the only public canvas in Hartland’s future.
Dan Gottesgen, a Hartland painter, wants to put art at the Hartland Three Corners Intersection, which is about to get an overhaul. It’s scheduled for redesign into a fourway stop. Gottsegen says he’d like to enlist the help of the Vermont Arts Council, which often helps match public spaces to artwork. The council puts out a call to artists, hosts a competition for a piece of art that tells the story of a building or a community and selects finalists.
The Vermont Arts Council funded public art in Jeffersonville, paying to have old silos painted. “At first there was some resistance to the project,” said Vermont Arts Council Senior Program Director Michele Bailey.
There were some who thought the paint would look too graffiti-like.
Through community input, artist involvement and votes in support of it, the project is moving along.
“Good public art should be forever new in the eyes of the viewer,” said Gottsegen.
The problem is: It’s not all art in everyone’s eyes.
“You’re never going to get one piece of art that everyone loves,” said Bailey.
The Hartland select board has yet to decide if it wants to take Ferris’ offer and has yet to consider Gottesgen’s idea. Select board member Mary O’Brien spoke in favor of public art at a recent select board meeting, saying she wanted to be on record supporting it. There were reservations by others about how it would be perceived.
Ferris’ statue in Hartland would be similar to a structure on his own piece of land, called a toori — a Japanese word meaning the entrance of a sacred place. That’s how Ferris, a Buddhist, views land.
When neighbors asked what the giant toori structure was, he told them, “I’m making a gift for this piece of land,” he said.
The piece sits on a strip of 200-year-old farmland he owns. The saddle of the log mirrors the curve of Mount Ascutney in the background.
It looks like a door to the mountains, like the mountains are smiling.
“He’s very much like his own work, he’s easygoing,” said Charlet Davenport, who hosts Sculpturefest in Woodstock, an event Ferris is part of every year. “He lives in a world that represents nature and an art form that’s very natural.”
Perhaps because it’s rooted in nature, Ferris’ art “doesn’t interrupt people, it kind of greets them,” Davenport said. “Sometimes I have art that people have trouble accepting because it’s unfamiliar,” she said. “We’ve never had that happen with his work.”
The tree for the smiling log statue Ferris envisions for Hartland came from Cornish, New Hampshire. He has shaved the bark off. He said he could be done in a month.
For him what his neighbors get from looking at the land is more important than trying to sell his work.
“If people look at that beautiful hill on exit 9 in a different way because of this focal point at the top of it…I’d be delighted,” Ferris said.
This article first appeared in the May 26, 2016 edition of the Vermont Standard.