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Michele Kostelnik Parrillo on The sculpture in Pat Feinstein's front garden: The history of 'Hope and the 3 Children' steve elias on The sculpture in Pat Feinstein's front garden: The history of 'Hope and the 3 Children' pat feinstein on The sculpture in Pat Feinstein's front garden: The history of 'Hope and the 3 Children' karen anne on The sculpture in Pat Feinstein's front garden: The history of 'Hope and the 3 Children' To comment on any posting, click on the word 'Comments' at the end of the item. |
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« Tree stump's metamorphosis proves a street show supreme | Main | Don't be too nice to tomatoes » June 3, 2007The sculpture in Pat Feinstein's front garden: The history of 'Hope and the 3 Children'
Once upon a time, there was a huge tree, supposedly 57 years old, at the corner of my front yard. I later learned that it actually came from three red oaks, grown together with conjoined roots. The tree offered lovely shade, but became overgrown with the passing years. I could hardly grow any flowering plants. Several attempts to trim the branches, which turned out to be quite costly, only made the tree grow more vigorously, with deep roots damaging the foundation of the house. Constantly fighting a losing battle with oak drops and fallen leaves in the spring and fall, I finally decided to have it cut down, but left the trunk about 12 feet high, with the hope that it could be made into some kind of a sculpture. Searching for a tree artist proved almost impossible. One artist said it would require a scaffolding. I thought cutting the trunk to half its height might improve the chance of finding someone to work on it.
Working with children for most of my professional life (I'm a child psychiatrist), I wanted the sculpture to have the theme of children at play. The 3-trees-in-1 allowed the two artists to create 3 children standing, with linked arms. There was enough room to add one more figure, hence the kneeling girl with her hands clasped, depicting a Thai greeting. We eventually named her Hope, to signify optimistic anticipation, plus we are just off Hope Street. The three standing children represented my three children, now 41, 38 and 35. They were frozen in time and would remain children, playing in a unified fashion. Providence Journal reporter Thomas J. Morgan wrote a nice article about the sculpture that appeared on Friday, October 8, 1993. Here's how it begins, with the lines from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: Tree stump's metamorphosis proves a street show supreme Now, almost 14 years later, the carved tree stump has gone through several makeovers with varnishes, paints and even "surgeries" to replace the feet with steel and the tree root with concrete. The sun, rain, snow and the number of years caused irreparable damages, although we still hope it will stand there for years to come.
Many people came to expect me to accessorize them with hats, scarves and shawls, according to the changing season. One year I received a phone message from an elderly gentleman from Philadelphia. Visiting relatives in Providence around Thanksgiving, he said, he noticed that I had not put on their winter gear like I usually did and he was afraid that I had neglected them. How wonderful it is that people come to care about an inanimate object that adds such personalized feelings and grace to my little garden!
Posted by Pat Feinstein Commentskaren anne | June 3, 2007 8:40 AM link Thank you, Karen. The 'real' children like to climb up and play with the statue and few people come by to sit on it and have their pictures taken. Fortunately, there has been no vandalism. Several sets of hats were stolen; so I do not put expensive or very special hats on them anymore. Over the years, they have donned New Year's hats, St. Patrick's Day's hats and even Graduation caps to mark special occasions. pat feinstein | June 3, 2007 3:49 PM link Dr Pat, Mom told me about your blog about the statues in your yard, I really enjoyed reading about the history of the tree, and the story of how you dress the children for the season. as well as seeing the changes in the garden over the years. steve elias | June 10, 2007 11:50 AM link I lived in R.I. most of my life. We are in Florida for seven years now. These children of wood are a great creation of happiness and give one a warm feeling of contentment in those wonderful hands in prayer. My camera will be ready to snap shot them in late June when I arrive. Michele Kostelnik Parrillo | June 15, 2007 2:47 PM link Post a commentPlease be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity won't be published. |
It took almost 3 years before I found Frank Reedy, who has a woodworking shop in Scituate that's on my way to work. He knew a Korean Tree Artist, Sang In Kim, and together they started working on the tree stump. That was October, 1993.
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Wow, that's just amazing. Are the children concrete now?
And to think I pat myself on the head for not leaving stumps around :-) Although when I had a much bigger yard, I would leave fallen trees for wildlife, clearly not practical here.
Some years ago when I lived in Palo Alto, one of our sister cities, Linkoping, Sweden, gave Palo Alto a wooden statue of a family group, made in the traditional Scandinavian whimsical fashion. It included a dog and a bird. Most people in the city loved it, and would dress the family up for holidays, and children would climb on it. The city Art Commission, famous for inflicting such "works of art" as a gilded pig on the town, hated it, and some people vandalized it, giving the Commission an excuse to get rid of it. That was really sad.