Over the last few weeks, visitors to the Sutter Oval have noticed three new members of the Wagner College campus community. They are part of a bronze, nearly life-sized sculpture, “Storybooks,” by artist George Wayne Lundeen that was donated to the college by the Spiro family. The sculpture will be dedicated later this fall.
Lundeen, born in 1948, is a native of Holdrege, Neb. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Hastings College and his MFA from the University of Illinois before studying as a Fulbright-Hayes scholar at the Academia de Belle Arte in Florence, Italy. In the mid-1970s, Lundeen established his sculpting studio in Loveland, Colo., where he continues to live and work.
A national inventory of public art, created by the Smithsonian American Art Museums, describes Wagner College’s new sculpture: “Three figures seated on a bench, reading: a woman, a girl and a boy. The woman holds an open book with her left hand; her right arm is around the boy. The boy has his right foot on the bench as he holds an open book with both hands. The girl lies on the lap of the woman and reads the boy’s book.”
The casting of “Storybooks” to be found on the Oval is one of 21 pieces fabricated by Lundeen in 1992. Several other castings of the sculpture can be found at libraries in the American West, including the Beatrice (Neb.) Public Library, the Koelbel Public Library in Littleton, Colo., and the Laramie County Library in Laramie, Wyo.
View images of other pieces by George W. Lundeen on his website.
