Animals of Freedom
The gardens surrounding the Peace Fountain were designed to include small bronze monuments created by children surrounding the granite fountain wall. The “Animals of Freedom” program sent 10,000 invitations to the art teachers and principals of private, public and parochial schools in all five boroughs of New York City as well as Westchester and Rockland Counties, NY, Fairfield County, CT, and Bergen County, NJ.
By these invitations, several thousands of school children’s artistic maquettes were created in wood, terra cotta and plaster and were submitted and displayed in the Cathedral’s Great Choir for consideration of creating New York City’s first children’s sculpture garden. An open and jury-selected invitation to identify young artists based on highest artistic merit with the Cathedral’s co-sponsorship outreach. The annual display included works from participating public, private and parochial schools.
In the first year of the program, there were over 3,000 models submitted, and 24 selected to be cast in bronze. These first 24 works, created by lower school artists, were presented during the formal unveiling of the “Peace Fountain” on May 18th, 1985. Greg Wyatt and Dean James Parks Morton, over the course of five years, expanded this to 120 sculptural works made by individual children, ages 5-17, who’s collective “Children’s Sculpture Garden” serves as a testament to the this youthful creativity.
The project celebrates a harmonious union of the imagination; each participant was asked to express their unique understanding of freedom—through the figures of animals for the first three years of the program, and in the form of sculpted bas-relief books in the final two years of the program. The subjects represented in these works show growing complexity, from single figure gestures of animal forms, to multi-figure animal narratives in sculpture, to the expression of words and images that show the sculptor’s rationale and their historical inspirations in the bas-relief books. And yet, each work touches upon an even greater thread of unity: given the space, encouragement and resources, the imagination of children delivers comprehension of metaphysical ideas such as freedom and peace through artistic media.
