Betty Gold sculpture maquettes join her major work in front of Hutton Sports Center

Betty Gold, one of America’s most influential contemporary artists, has donated a suite of 12 sculpture maquettes to Chapman University’s Escalette Permanent Collection of Art “in honor of the students whose search for beauty sparks the intellectual life of Chapman University,” said the artist. The dozen small white metal sculptures join a major sculptural work, “Colgado II,” that she was commissioned to create for the facade of the Hutton Sports Center.

The Texas-born painter and sculptor, who has exhibited in museums and fine-art galleries around the world and whose monumental pieces grace public and private spaces throughout the U.S. and Europe, recently gifted Chapman with the collection of white metal maquettes (models of or for larger sculptures) which can be looked at together as a piece of art in their own right, as well as viewed in visual balance with her large sculpture “Colgado II” (2013), exhibited on the southeast corner of the Hutton Center facade.

The elegantly angular yet hefty maquettes break up the space and add a jolt of visual interest to the flat planes of the Hutton Center front. They were created in 2015 as models of Gold’s large final sculptures that now stand in such locations as Fordham University (Bronx, N.Y.), the Brea Tech Center (Brea, Calif.), Boise State University (Boise, Ida.), the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul, S. Korea), the Biloxi Library and Culture Center (Biloxi, Miss.) and more.  As a plaque that accompanies the maquettes explains, Gold is “dedicated to placing her artwork in academic environments to stimulate curiosity and cross-disciplinary research.”

Gold often works with folded paper in preparation for her sculptures. She is mainly concerned with lines and planes and large three-dimensional figures in space, as well as “creating dialogue between geometric shapes and negative spaces,” according to the explanatory plaque near the sculptures.  Seen in bright sunlight, the curves and lines of the sculptures throw stark shadows, further adding to the beauty and intrigue of their forms.

Chapman University thanks Betty Gold for her generous contribution to the University’s burgeoning outdoor art collection — after all, everyone needs a little art in their day.  As Chapman President Jim Doti has said, “there is a sort of osmosis that happens when you’re immersed in an environment so rich in aesthetic stimulation…these works have a lasting impact on all who come into their presence.”