Sculptor gives trove of tools, books to arts school
Why?
"Because I could cut the bejeezus out of it!" the sculptor shouts.
Goodacre gifted the books and tools en masse to the New Mexico School for the Arts, where a new generation will use them to tell untold stories, as she did for half a century.
Beyond the National Mall and Reagan Library installations, notable Goodacre sculptures include the massive Irish Memorial in Philadelphia, which features more than 20 life-size bronze figures; a tribute to the founders of the Mayo Clinic, 10 1/2 feet tall, that now sits at a Mayo hospital in Phoenix; and a statue of decorated Army football coach Earl "Red" Blaik, who led the U.S. Military Academy to three consecutive national championships in the 1940s.
Among the qualities her sculptures communicate by means of gesture, texture and realistic ideation are innocence, humor, heroism, kindness, genius, history, triumph, tragedy, pathos and love," wrote critic Wolfgang Mabry in Sculpture Review, "and they have found clear and moving expression in her varied and prodigious output.
Molds are typically destroyed after an artist's death, he said, because the value of potential castings would be subject to an estate tax.
The final design of the coin was unveiled at a White House ceremony in May 1999 by then-first lady Hillary Clinton.
After a long and sometimes controversial design process punctuated by debate over the depiction of a Native American woman, Goodacre told The Washington Post, "It's amazing to me to think that I'll have a small piece of sculpture in people's pockets for years."