Her hand holds a needle and thread, like her mother’s once did.
The smell of machine oil and curls of steel lying on the floor of the shop where she gets material for her sculptures remind her of the tool and die business her father owned when she was young.
Her 18-year career in architecture helps her imagine how her sculptures fit within a space, and her degree in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design laid a foundation from which her artistic career was built.
Elizabeth Busch’s artwork is an extension of herself and represents the sum of her experiences.
“It’s all come full circle,” she said.
Busch’s most recent sculpture, titled “Home,” was installed at the atrium of the Cultural Building in Augusta as a second-generation Percent for Art project. A formal presentation of the sculpture will take place at 12:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 21, and feature remarks by Busch and Maine Arts Commission Director Julie Richard.
The piece depicts various scenes Busch believes illustrate her “home” in the Pine Tree State: Mount Katahdin, Aroostook County potato fields, azalea gardens, the blue of waters lapping at distant shores, expanses of marsh in Acadia National Park, a solitary lighthouse sitting high on a rocky pinnacle. It’s a compilation of the beauty of Maine brought together in a form Busch has perfected over the years: strips of UV acetate colored with acrylic medium, pure pigment and mica powders weaved through black plastic netting. “Home” acts as Busch’s impression of Maine, a place she has called home for many years.
“Maine has fed me in so many ways — heart, soul, body,” Busch said. “It’s a place that I absolutely love.”
The image she created is 14 feet high, more than 13 feet wide and took her more than four months to complete — a short time compared to her last sculpture, which took 14 months from start to finish. “Home” was then cut into nine 14-foot-long sections that were sewn and assembled onto three separate steel armatures, which are suspended from the atrium skylight, 45 feet above the Cultural Building’s floor.
The sections, which are attached to swivels, are designed so they move and project colors and light. Suspended from the ceiling of the glass-walled atrium, the design allows the sun to catch the sculpture, reflecting colors on surfaces as sunlight flows through.
“Home” is special to Busch because of what it represents and what it will replace — her sculpture titled “Celebration,” which once hung in the same space. The piece was the first sculpture of its kind Busch had done and was installed in 1990. On a visit to the building years later, she realized the material she used originally — colored film used for theatre lighting instead of the UV acetate she now uses — had faded. Because the art acted as a representation of her work, she decided to have the piece deaccessioned. It was removed, and the space lacked a work of art. Now it’s being filled once more by “Home,” a new piece with materials designed to withstand the test of time.
Busch, a resident of Glenburn since 1973, created her signature sculpture design used in both pieces with a simple idea. In 1989, she was picked as one of four finalists to install a commissioned piece in the atrium of the Cultural Building in Augusta. The space required a something unique — different than what she had done before.
Busch used black plastic garden netting to keep deer away from her backyard raspberry bushes, and the material gave her an idea. She wanted to see what she could do with it.
“I had just pulled some netting off my raspberry bushes,” Busch said. “I took a watercolor that I had done and wove it through. I stuck it up on my wall and thought, ‘Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this.’”
She was required to obtain tests showing the longevity of the materials she used for the piece. In a call to the company that produced the netting, she received an answer she still laughs at today.
“I said what I wanted to use it for, and she said, ‘You want to do what? Ma’am this is to keep the deer off your bushes! This isn’t art stuff!’”
But with a little ingenuity, she soon began creating pieces that have touched many parts of the world, from Presque Isle to Augusta and points in between, as well as in more far-flung locations in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Florida, Massachusetts and New Mexico.
Sculpture isn’t Busch’s only art form. She creates sewn paintings — acrylic on canvas that is then hand quilted. These are what she calls her “soul work,” pieces that started her career in art and help her express her love of painting. Before she began making the massive sculptures hanging in buildings across the United States, she painted quilts, showing them in art exhibits throughout Maine and making commissioned pieces as well.
Separate parts of Busch’s life have come together in her art and the choice she made to set out on her own artistic path has led her to create a piece that will feature in the atrium of the Cultural Building for years to come.
“I’m so happy I’m able to do this,” Busch said. “To do this commission made so much sense.”
