THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 28, 1995 TAG: 9509280374
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
Mary Quinn, the Irish artist now living in England, stood Wednesday on the campus of Virginia Wesleyan College before her bronze statue of John Wesley, to be unveiled today in a public dedication.
The life-sized figure was perched on a pedestal of top-grade Tennessee pink marble, so the sculptor's gaze necessarily was upward.
In spring 1994, however, Quinn spent eight weeks eye-to-eye with the founder of Methodism in a bitter-cold studio near London. ``I felt he was there with me all the time,'' she said. ``And I talked to him. I'd say, `Right now, Wesley. We're getting on with things today.' I felt his essence all around, so it was easy to do.''
The 18th-century traveling preacher was 5-foot-2, so Quinn's model was a retired jockey in a rented opera costume.
Working alongside Britain's top sculptors in the Arch Bronze Foundry, Quinn let the spirit of Wesley - and of her late sculptor-grandfather - move through her and guide the work.
She sensed the significance of the commission: Worldwide, only five other full statues of Wesley are known to exist, and none is by a living artist. ``It was absolutely exhilarating. I couldn't wait to get into the studio each day,'' Quinn recalled.
Quinn had not seen the statue since January, when it was shipped to Norfolk.
``Lovely,'' she said, eyeing the installation near the entrance to Boyd Dining Center.
``As I worked on it, I didn't realize precisely where it would go,'' she said. The setting was as she envisioned it. ``Not too high up, so it is accessible to students. To greet them, welcome them.''
Quinn was commissioned by a Virginia Beach couple, Robert F. and Sara M. Boyd, devout Methodists who are longtime benefactors for the college. The dining center is named for them.
In giving the statue, the Boyds hoped to inspire students with Wesley's ``love and devotion for his fellow man, his faith and his interest in improving the mind so that the spirit could be more accomplished,'' Robert Boyd said.
Quinn, 52, has been a professional sculptor for a decade. She specializes in portrait busts - that is, sculptural like-nesses from the chest up.
Wesley was her first complete figure commission. ``Interestingly enough, I had no fear. It should have been daunting, but it wasn't. The beauty of it was, I had done his head. And I felt I knew him. He had soaked into me.
``Which is funny, because I'm Irish Catholic.''
The Boyds found Quinn through Brian Thornton, general manager for Methodist Publishing House of Great Britain. In 1991, Thornton had commissioned Quinn to create an edition of bronze busts of Wesley to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his death.
The Boyds had seen the bust, and felt Quinn was right for the job.
Lifelong fans of Wesley, the Boyds had strong ideas about how he should be depicted. Unlike Quinn's initial portrayal - as an older man in ministerial robes - the Boyds wanted him dressed as a common man of his day in a plain coat and buckled shoes.
The Boyds also wanted Wesley in the prime of his life - fortyish.
Fortyish was Quinn's age when she took up art seriously for the first time.
She was one of nine siblings reared in the County Down in Northern Ireland. Though offered a scholarship to Belfast University, Quinn had to take a civil service job instead to help her struggling family. Though hardly exposed to art, she was ``desperate to do it,'' she recalled.
Much later, after moving to England, marrying and having three daughters, she finally enrolled in an art class. At that point, she learned her maternal grandfather had been an ambitious sculptor of Carrara marble.
As Quinn worked with clay for the first time, teachers expressed amazement at her quick facility. ``It's in the genes,'' one said. That was in the early 1980s. Since then, one sculptural commission has led to another, she said. The projects get larger all the time.
Quinn doesn't feel she's doing it all on her own. ``I remember early on, I couldn't get the eyes right. Finally I said, `Granddad, you got me into this. Will you give me a hand?'
``And it worked. From now on, when I come to the eyes, I say, `OK, Granddad, give me some help.''' MEMO: The unveiling, which is free and open to the public, will be at 1:30
p.m. today at Virginia Wesleyan College, 1584 Wesleyan Drive,
Norfolk/Virginia Beach.
ILLUSTRATION: JIMMY WALKER
Staff
The John Wesley statue was sculptor Mary Quinn's first complete
figure commission.
by CNB