Ursula von Rydingsvard’s large-scale cedar sculpture, "Wide Babelki Bowl," was just installed on the Dartmouth campus near Rollins Chapel. It’s a behemoth that seems to both command the lawn it sits on while nestling comfortably as though it has been there forever. Any sculpture that causes me to walk around it a few times to view it from all angles has my devotion. My sole complaint is that looking down into the bowl will be a pleasure reserved only for the very tall.

A description of how the artist created this sculpture is better left to visual images rather than words. You’ll see why when you click here. And while you’re there on the artist’s website, take a look around at von Rydingsvard’s other inventive and imposing works.

Looking for more off-screen? Storm King Art Center in New Windsor NY (now open) appears to feature two of von Rydingsvard’s sculptures, including “Luba,” her first large sculpture created in solid cedar, where “a delicate appendage extends down to the ground; von Rydingsvard has said that it is intended to resemble the arm of a mother cradling a baby.” See if you agree.

(Photo, top, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Wide Babelki Bowl, 2007, cedar. Gift of Margarit and Jens Jacobs; 2019.90. © Ursula von Rydingsvard. Photo by Patrick Dunfey. Courtesy of the Hood Museum. Photo, bottom, Wide Babelki Bowl, detail, by Susan B. Apel)

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