Fisher College of Business

Gaia
higher resolution 38Kb

Cast aluminum, 32" x 24" x 1"
Klatskin Undergraduate Student Lounge 219

Pallas
higher resolution 39Kb

Cast aluminum, 32" x 24" x 1"
Klatskin Undergraduate Student Lounge 219

Anthony Davenport graduated from Princeton University with a degree in architecture but in the late 1970s turned his attention to sculpture. In 1978-79 he studied with ceramic sculptor Claude Horan under a Tiffany Apprenticeship Grant. He received three Ohio University Research grants during the 1980s that allowed him to explore stone carving and create site-specific sculpture. His most recent ceramic sculpture is noted for its clean, elemental, abstract form.

Davenport, a professor of art at Ohio University-Lancaster, conducts an annual term in Europe as director of Northwood Europe. His sculpture has been exhibited worldwide.

My early training was in architecture. Two years before I created Pallas and Gaia, I visited classical sites in the Mediterranean. I was especially impressed by the ruins of ancient Ephesus in Turkey. Memories of these sites inspired a series of sculptures and reliefs in clay, cast paper, and aluminum, based on the juxtaposition of architectural fragments. Another concern of mine at this time was the proportional system known as the Golden Section, extensively used by ancient architects. Eventually fragments of figures, or abstractions partially figural and partially architectural, began to intrude into these compositions, just as in a ruined square a toppled torso will lean against a fragment of a fallen cornice. These pieces were never meant to be representational but rather to evoke, through a sense of measured order, the serene humanism of the classical outlook. Pallas and Gaia belong to a series of four cast-aluminum reliefs of identical dimensions that represent the culmination of this period of my work.