Farrow left mark on region
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A photograph of Patrick Farrow and flowers were left at “The Leash” in Depot Park in Rutland on Wednesday, following the artist’s death. Cassandra Hotaling / Rutland Herald |
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By Gordon Dritschilo Staff Writer - Published: June 18, 2009
Patrick Farrow's best-known sculpture, at least locally, started with a 1-foot square base he made for a different piece.
He cut a strip off it, and started wondering what he could do with the strip.
"I was thinking in terms of yin and yang," he said in an interview in 1998. "I came up with, just sort of offhandedly, with this sort of organic and inorganic."
Farrow described the result as depicting a struggle between a representation of money, absolute time and right angles on one side, and on the other a "bundle of nerves who just wants to get out of there."
Titled "The Leash," it shows a dog straining against the invisible leash shackling him to a parking meter. Farrow made a larger version of the sculpture and raised $20,000 to place it in Depot Park in Rutland.
Farrow died Monday at age 66. Vermont State Police announced Farrow's death Tuesday and declined to comment further after Vermont Chief Medical Examiner Steven Shapiro ruled the death a suicide Wednesday. Police said he died from a single gunshot wound to the head.
Farrow was the brother of actress Mia Farrow, an association that brought national media attention to his death. Late Wednesday, a police lieutenant put out a statement saying he could not return calls, commenting that his voice mail had filled three times that day and pointing media to previous releases.
Farrow's family put out a statement describing him as a "beloved husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle."
Son of a director and an actress, Farrow's early jobs included acting in Hollywood, sailing with the merchant marines and delivering messages for Western Union. He learned welding in California and then blossomed as a sculptor.
Working out of his home and gallery in a converted church on Main Street in Castleton, Farrow said his most productive time was the winter, when he would listen to shortwave radio in his workshop and create pieces ranging from lifelike studies of motion to surreal mergings of animal and machine.
Jonathan LaFarge, a 28-year-old sculptor from Dorset who works primarily in steel and glass, said he first became aware of Farrow's work at the Carving Studio. Farrow's use of the human figure in his work inspired him.
"The way I had trained was an abstract expressionist school and the figure was looked down upon," the Montserrat College of Art graduate said. "It was an affirmation to see someone doing figurative work and that people were interested in figurative work."
LaFarge said he particularly reacted to Farrow's pieces that combined figures with machines, or in which multiple figures came together to form an image.
"It was nontraditional and very well executed," he said. "I always responded to that about his work and it was really affirming because it's what I hope to achieve myself."
When they spoke during shows at Farrow's gallery, LaFarge said the elder sculptor encouraged him and offered advice.
"In that regard he was very generous," he said. "He had the professional side down — how to represent your work, how to get your message across, how to maintain a space and attract visitors in a way that you still get your work done."
When he emerged from his workshop, Farrow was active in the community.
He opposed the construction of a trash-burning plant in Rutland in the 1980s, served on Castleton's Zoning Board in the 1990s and, at the beginning of this decade, was part of a successful movement to keep Castleton's town offices in the village area.
He hosted a fundraiser for his sister's relief efforts in Darfur, and appeared at several protests against the Iraq war, at one holding a sign telling the government to support the troops by bringing them home.
One of the troops he wanted home was his nephew, Jason Dene, who died in Iraq last year in what the military called a "noncombat related incident." The death angered Farrow, who wrote a scathing letter that circulated on the Internet taking George Bush and the military's "stop-loss" policy to task.
Farrow's career included numerous national awards and his work was sold in galleries in New York City and Florida. In interview after interview, he talked about how content he was living and working in Vermont.
"I'm doing what I want to do," he told an interviewer in 1998. "I'm having fun with it."
gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com
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