For my art excursion, I visited Opus 40 in Saugerties New York. The exhibition is a large outdoor sculpture park. The sculpture park was created by Henry Fite who purchased the lot of land that is now Opus 40 in 1938. At that time the lot of land was an abandon sandstone quarry. Fite, an art professor at Bard college, set out to dedicate the next 40 years of his life to building a massive sculpture from the quarry. The stones in the sculpture were each hand laid by Fite himself. He used methods derived from the ancient Mayans. No concrete was used in the construction so the structure is resistant to the harsh winters of New York and has held up well since it was built. Unfortunately, the sculpture was never completed because Fine died just three years before the end of his 40 year goal. In 1976 Fine’s wife Barbara opened the sculpture park to the public. Regardless of its unfinished state, Opus 40 and the sculptures and quarryman’s museum that Fite left behind are a magnificent sight to see. It is nestled in the Catskill Mountains near Woodstock. It appears out of no where off a long windy forest road.The sculpture lies in the shadow of a majestic mountain. The surrounding natural area is awe inspiring in and of itself. It is no wonder that Fite chose this spot to live and work for the majority of his life. Arriving at the statue, a …show more content…
I get tired of working on a piece after a very short amount of time and often hate what I make. Fite must have been so confident and sure of himself to devote so much time to one work. I wonder what type of frustration and personal obstacles he overcame to continue his project. If Fite had been able to complete his goal, his personal achievement of a forty year devotion would have been just as impressive as the art itself. I hope that as an artist I may be able to find a project that fulfills and excites me as Opus 40 did to