HADDONFIELD DINOSAUR SCULPTURE DESIGN UNVEILED
John Giannotti Selected as Project Artist
By Hoag Levins ...| ...August 25, 2002
HADDONFIELD, N.J. -- John Giannotti, sculptor and former chairman of the Rutgers University Fine Arts Department,
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| Photo: Dan Holben. |
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The winning sculpture design by John Giannotti will be executed in one ton of bronze. Click to see larger photo.
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has been selected to design and create a one-ton sculpture of a dinosaur for Haddonfield's business district.
At a borough commission meeting last week, HATCH, the local civic group overseeing the project, also unveiled a model of Giannotti's winning Hadrosaurus foulkii design. The 56-year-old Haddonfield resident, who runs Giannotti Studios in a barn behind his home, was one of five sculptors vying for the project.
15 feet long
To be cast in bronze, the eight-foot-high, 15-foot-long statue of the prehistoric beast will be the centerpiece of a landscaped garden area in Lantern Lane, a pedestrian walkway in the center of the historic town's village-like business district.
The discovery of the Hadrosaurus foulkii fossil in a Haddonfield marl pit in 1858 was a landmark event in the history of paleontology. It was the first nearly-complete skeleton of a dinosaur ever found and became the first dinosaur skeleton ever mounted for museum display anywhere in the world.
The sculpture project to
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John Giannotti has works in many South Jersey locations.
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commemorate that historic event was started in 2000 by the Haddonfield Garden Club, which has long managed the gardens in Lantern Lane. The private effort has received the blessing of borough government and will be paid for through a local citizens' fund-raising drive.
'Year of the Dinosaur'
Current plans calls for the finished sculpture and its surrounding garden to be unveiled in time to celebrate 2003 as Haddonfield's "Year of the Dinosaur," according to HATCH spokespersons.
HATCH (Haddonfield Acts to Create Hadrosaurus foulkii), is the dinosaur sculpture committee created by the Garden Club to select an artist and manage the project. HATCH has also launched an information Web site at Hadrosaurus.com.
Clay model unveiled
Giannotti's clay model for the dinosaur sculpture was officially presented at a meeting of the Haddonfield Borough Commission last week. It depicts the creature in a full body pose similar to that seen at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where the bones of Hadrosaurus foulkii have been been displayed for 144 years.
Giannotti, a painter and sculptor of international reputation, has been featured in solo exhibitions and in galleries in Italy, England, Canada and the U.S.
Artist's other local works
Retired in 2001 after 31 years as a professor of the arts at Rutgers,
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| Photo: Hoag Levins. |
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The Cooper River Parkway construction site of Giannotti's 'Victims of Terrorism Memorial' as it looked in August.
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Giannotti is now a professor emeritus and artist whose large sculptures dot the south Jersey landscape. For instance, his eight-foot statue of Walt Whitman stands in the Children's Garden of the New Jersey State Aquarium, his full-size bronze fireman carrying a child to safety down a ladder commemorates heroism at the Chews Landing Fire Company, and his playful "Shark Series 7" -- a group of bronze shark fins that appear to slice across the lawn of Cooper River Parkway near the Hopkins House art center -- is one of the area's best-remembered pieces of public art.
Memorial to terror victims
But Giannotti's most moving work -- a seven-pillar circular "Victims of
Terrorism Memorial," will be dedicated on Sept. 11 at Cooper River Parkway in Pennsauken. Commissioned by the Camden County Freeholders, it is a memorial to victims of terrorist attacks ranging from the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, to last year's Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
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