Western Vision in limestone
Ann Merck has a NHBA Fine Arts and studied sculpture in Italy.
Merck was one of the later contributors to Liberty Hill’s Sculpture Garden.
In April of 1978 Ann Merck was calling her reclining female figure “Under the Texas Sun,” but the lovely nude would become “Western Vision.”
Thursday, March 9, 2021
Ann Merck Adds To Liberty Hill Sculpture
By HERB DELACOURT
Shown hard at work on “Daphne and Apollo” is Anne Merck, our town’s latest in a series of continuing visiting sculptors, adding to our Sculpture Symposium collection!
Anne, who is actually without benefit of a formal training in sculpting, seemed destined to be a sculptor from her birth in Newark, New Jersey.
Her grandmother studied sculpture under the world renowned Archie Penko and her mother both paints and sculpts. Anne was raised in a small country town, similar to Liberty Hill, Mendham, New Jersey.
She studied all the arts in school and first discovered her creativity while building things in the woods out of nature’s materials. At Junior College in Bradford, Mass., she became convinced that a form of art was to be her vocation, rather than music. Diane Engle, her drawing instructor, was instrumental in Anne’s life, as it was she who convinced Anne to pursue art. To this day, Anne feels that drawing, in and of itself, is an integral part of any artistic career.
Sigmind Abeles, her drawing instructor at the University of New Hampshire (UNH); was another who Anne credits toward getting her career aimed in the right direction. In Boston, Anne started carving marble, again and still without formal sculpting training, while studying art at night school. In the South of France, while with a Sarah Lawrence College program, she taught herself the beginnings of limestone sculpting.
After a return to the States for her BA degree from UNH, Anne spent four of the most important months of her life in the Pallas section of Piatrasante, Italy, an internationally known headquarters for sculptors. In Pallas, originals are created as well as copies of the old masters. Anne worked side by side with sculptors who had been doing this for years and
became, in effect, her teachers. After learning the basics of the language, Anne was able to converse and understand. She learned styles, methods, procedures, and many of the ins and outs of sculpting.
It was there she first met Mel Fowler of Liberty Hill who invited her to come over and add to the Symposium collection. This will be Anne’s first show and she feels she owes a great debt of gratitude to Mel for giving her this opportunity. It will also be her first works in public and she is looking forward to the challenge. Becoming a part of the Liberty Hill International Sculpture Symposium gives her career a significant, boost and will serve as a door-opener to other shows and galleries, Anne feels.
Her work for the Symposium will be of a reclining woman, as yet untitled, gazing out over the countryside. It will be a figurative sculpture where what you see is what you sea;