2003, Commonwealth Ave. & Fairfield St. Boston, MA
bronze and granite, pavement 30’ diameter, figures 1.2 times life size
Commissioned for Boston’s historic Back Bay, commemorating Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley & Lucy Stone for their writing and their impact on society. The women have come down off their pedestals (as in this century women have, symbolically) and have deconstructed their traditional orientation in order to use their pedestals as work surfaces.
photo © Ricardo Barros.com
2003, bronze,
63” x 65” x 42”
The three figures, each surrounded by the words for which she is famous, create a space in which a visitor may compare their ideas and actions to form a larger picture of the possibilities for and demands of a heroic female life.
Boston Women’s Memorial
2003
bronze
63” x 65” x 42”
Stone, renowned as a marvelous orator for abolition and women’s rights, represents Activism. She is portrayed in middle age, when she moved to Boston and founded The Woman’s Journal.
Boston Women’s Memorial
2003
bronze
63” x 65” x 42”
“Let woman’s sphere be bounded only by her capacity.”
Women’s Rights Convention, Worcester, MA 1851
Boston Women’s Memorial
2003
bronze
75” x 33” x 21”
Adams, presidential advisor and correspondent, represents old age and Contemplation. She is looking back over her life’s work and influence and perhaps challenging us to do the same.
Boston Women’s Memorial
2003
bronze
75” x 33” x 21”
“Remember that all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound be any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
Letter to John Adams, Mar. 31, 1776
Boston Women’s Memorial
2003
bronze
59” x 50” x 32
Wheatley, a slave in colonial Boston, was our first published African-American poet. Her pose is derived from the the only extant image of her, a profile portrait engraved for the frontispiece of her book of poetry.
Boston Women’s Memorial
2003
bronze
59” x 50” x 32
Here, Wheatley represents youth and Imagination. A stanza from her poem On Imagination is inscribed on her pedestal, ending with visionary imaginative power and freedom:
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze the unbounded soul.
Boston Women’s Memorial
2003
bronze
59” x 50” x 32
On her pedestal:
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatched from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery moved
That from a father seized his babe belov’d:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
