A crowd gathered Sunday afternoon along the trail leading from the Norfolk Library to Station Place to dedicate the third addition to the Norfolk Community Association (NCA) sculpture trail.
This one is by a Norfolk native, the late Anne Curtiss Scoville, who created graceful dancers out of hard steel.
The sculpture was given by Scoville’s daughter-in-law, Helen Scoville, who explained that the piece, which consists of two dancing figures, was originally crafted for her backyard in Washington, D.C., where it provided a focal point for a wall and pool. She said that her mother-in-law loved the opera and ballet and that “dancers were prominent in her work.”
Walter Godlewski, NCA treasurer and vice president, said that when NCA chose the site “we looked at different places and, with the lotus blossom located near City Meadow and the owl sculpture on Robertson Plaza, this seemed a logical extension of the trail.”
Before the sculpture was installed weeds and invasives were cleared from the location and stone mason Karl Munson was brought in to design the backdrop for the piece.
“Karl found granite from a dismantled mill that matches that in the train station and then built the wall in his backyard. He wanted to be sensitive to this location. He numbered the pieces, took it apart and reassembled it” at the site, Godlewski said, adding that the structure was completed and the sculpture affixed to it only days before the unveiling.
The NCA plans to add a sculpture every year or so as a way of encouraging pedestrians to enjoy the beauty of the town’s center.