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Standing in the Nielson Library Browsing Room last May during the unveiling of his bronze statuette of the late poet Sylvia Plath, British sculptor Nicholas Dimbleby noted how appropriate it was that the event was taking place during Commencement Weekend. He described the Plath figure as "moving off a strong stone plinth, which seems symbolic of students stepping forward, commencing, beginning life again." The piece is not intended to be "a slavish portrait," he said, "but rather an idea that represents a sense of regeneration," as does the Plath poem "Lady Lazarus," after which the sculpture is named.
The 12-inch-high statuette was cast from a terra-cotta maquette, or study model, for a never-completed, full-sized memorial proposed by Plath's friend Elizabeth Sigmund, to whom the poet dedicated her novel The Bell Jar. The statuette has been jointly purchased for the college by the library's Mortimer Rare Book Room, where it will reside, and the Friends of the Smith College Libraries, at whose Commencement Weekend gathering it was unveiled. Dimbleby, who was born in London in 1946 and studied at the Edinburgh and Goldsmiths colleges of art and at the Central School of Art and Design, was an assistant to Scottish sculptor William Pye for several years until he began making his own figurative pieces 20 years ago. His work is in numerous private collections around the world and has been exhibited regularly in Great Britain at The Royal Academy and elsewhere. In 1995, he had a one-man exhibition in Sai Kung, Hong Kong. During its unveiling, Dimbleby talked about other symbolic aspects of his Plath sculpture. "The concept I have put forward," he said, "is that, [just] as in the making of a final sculpture in bronze many molds must be made and broken, so it is in the forming of a personality: we must peel away layers to reach the truth. . . . It's an idea that makes real a metaphor that I'm sure Sylvia would like." Indeed, the figure in Dimbleby's work is depicted as emerging from the shards of a broken sculptor's mold. Dimbleby was accompanied to Smith by his son Joe, who in the fall of 1995, during an exchange program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, had taken the Smith course Romantic Poetry and Prose, taught by Patricia Skarda, associate professor of English. After learning of Plath's connections with Smith, his mention to Skarda of his father's sculpture of the poet ultimately led to the purchase of the statuette for the college. Already housed in the rare book room is a collection of some 4,000 pages of Plath manuscripts (including journals and letters as well as drafts of poems), books from the poet's library, and assorted biographical material. Plath, who graduated from Smith in 1955 and taught briefly at the college, was also the subject of an exhibition in the main hall of Neilson Library during the summer. It included the statuette as well as material from the Plath collection. |
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