At the conclusion of Summer Language Schools, Middlebury College added a new sculpture to its Northern edge. The sculpture, J Pindyck Miller’s “Youbie Obie”, resides in between Le Chateau, the Atwater Suites and Coffrin Hall. The College’s Committee on Art in Public Places, also known as CAPP, carefully picked the location of this statue.
“Students will be coming at it from all different directions,” explained Emmie Donadio, Chief Curator of the Middlebury College Museum of Art.
“The work also, because of its form, looks something like a gate. So it can also serve metaphorically as a gateway to this segment of campus,” Donadio added.
While some may view the work as a gate, it is undoubtedly open to a multitude of other interpretations, thoughts and emotions.
“You will discover how the pieces, rather the parts, of the sculpture interact with each other,” Miller said about “Youbie Obie”. “Every curve, every line, every angle, every juncture is there for a reason.”
Miller’s “looking machine”, a term he uses to describe all of his artwork, was generously donated to Middlebury College by a couple from Greenwich, Connecticut. The couple had owned Youbie Obie since the 1970s, but felt the piece deserved to be on display elsewhere, in order to elicit wonder and amazement from more people. They could not think of a more appropriate place that the artist’s own alma mater.
As students welcome this new sculpture to campus, they should be reminded of what a great metaphor not only Youbie Obie is, but also art in its entirety.
“Art is all search and invention and as with life itself, the things that are questions are always more compelling than the things that are known,” Miller said.
The College has a public art collection, which, as of now, is comprised of 19 pieces of art, mostly sculptures, that can be viewed around campus.
All pieces that are a part of the collection are mantained by the Committee on Art in Public Places. In 1994, per the Committee’s recomendation, the Board of Trustees appoved a “One Percent for Art” policy. The approval of this decision meant that funds would be secured for the purchase, installation and maintance of any scultptures or pieces of art that fall into the Public Art category.
