35th Anniversary of Dorothy Gillespie Hi Tech Outdoor Sculpture Installation in Lafayette Indiana.

Dear friends,

In 1982 my mother received a commission from Indiana's Art Museum of Greater Lafayette for an outdoor environmental sculpture. According to Kyra Belan, emerita professor of art Broward College, this presented my mother with a special challenge, "to harness the forces of technology by transforming space-age materials into a work of art, which she completed in 1985."

This project, "Launched Ribbon", was sponsored in part by the Indiana Arts Commission, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Alcoa Foundation, which supplied the material for the sculpture-mirrored airplane aluminum.

My mother had to deal with the thick aluminum sheet provided which could not be permanently bent or twisted, and would just bounce back to its original flat state.

She had to devise new methods to deal with this high-tech material, resulting in a new basic unit for her sculptures - the loop. She riveted each section of the sculpture together in order to force it to hold a curve permanently. She loved the rivet gun, hence one of her nicknames (Dorothy the Riveter). The other being Dorothy the Wizard of Art.

Another problem my mother had to deal with was that airplane aluminum does not accept paint. Thus, she had to paint its abstract design on separate, thin aluminum, and then cut out and bolt it to the mirrored surfaces of the loops.

In describing the sculpture Kyra Belan writes "this playful 'dragon' has bright, free-form blotches of color over its 'body,' painted in red, orange, yellow, and blue. The background color of the ribbons is the mirrored silver surface that reflects into itself the surrounding environment, becoming a part of the site; it also reflects the sky, the clouds, and the spectators."

My mother also donated a painting titled "Caravan - Flowering Desert", 1978 oil on canvas to the Permanent Collection of the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette. (See last photo.)

Warm regards,

Gary