Festival Friendships - Public sculpture by Diane Gorvin and Philip Bews

Festival Friendships

Description:
Watford is twinned with 5 towns:

Mainz (Germany - 1956)

Nanterre (France -1960)

Novgorod (Russia -1984)

Wilmington (USA - 1985)

Pesaro (Italy - 1988)

The theme is of Watford’s town twinning and the festivals common to several of the 6 connected towns.

The sculpture is composed of four 6 metre high columns, each comprising, a tower of three stainless steel tubes, and these support two cast bronze masks 1 metre long. Wrapping round the masks and upper half of the columns are copper ribbons - some patinated green.

The poles of the column pass through a domed bronze base and are fixed to a Yorkstone pier. This domed base has a relief map of the Northern hemisphere showing the location of the twin towns, and each pier has the title of the appropriate mask above it carved into the vertical face of the Yorkstone coping. See more pictures of Festival Friendship.

Commission Title: Festival Friendships

Sculptors:
Diane Gorvin and
Philip Bews

Production Period:
July - November 1999

Site:
St. Mary's Square,
in the centre of Watford

Commissioned By:
Watford Council

Two of the masks - Wilmington and, in the background, Nanterre. Paul Dalton, from Castle Fine Art Foundry, starts to make the moulds by painting on the silicone rubber.

See more pictures of Festival Friendship.

Production Method:
Each of the four columns was fabricated by ABR, Manchester, from 3 lengths of brush finished stainless steel tubing. They were welded to triangular stainless steel base and top plates and fixed with stainless steel bolts into concrete bases, within the Yorkstone piers.

Mr. West, stone mason, letter cut the names of each Twin Town and its festival title e.g. Watford - Rainbow Festival, onto the Yorkstone coping. The 1100mm diameter domed base covering the holding down plate, was made from Phil’s original in plaster and sand cast into bronze.

There are two masks at the top of each column, Diane made each mask from clay which was cast into bronze and patinated different colours, each mask representing a town.

Ribbons of copper, 75 x 3mm, loop around the work which was fixed on site during the installation by Castle Fine Art Foundry and ourselves.

A crane was used to lift the columns into place.