Daydreaming at the deCordova

“In the Wall I,” in resin, mica and foam, was  displayed at Boston’s La Montagne Gallery.
Courtesy Tory Fair
“In the Wall I,” in resin, mica and foam, was displayed at Boston’s La Montagne Gallery.
The deCordova Art Museum in Lincoln, Mass., known for its magnificent 35-acre sculpture park, has commissioned faculty artist Tory Fair to create a new installation as part of its distinguished Platform Series. Titled “Daydreaming,” the sculptural work will feature repeated images of the artist, cast in a pensive seated position and arrayed in clusters of flowers. It will be on display for a full year beginning in June.

Fair, 42, who holds a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art, has received numerous grants and honors during her career as an artist. A participant in more than two dozen group shows, she has also been featured in several solo exhibitions. In the most recent, at LaMontagne Gallery in Boston, she also displayed sculptural forms of herself bedecked in blossoms. In describing the exhibition, art critic 
Francine Koslow Miller of Sculpture magazine wrote, “A desire for growth, exploration and self-discovery guides Fair’s alluring images. Her self-reflective works seek to connect with the viewer in what she describes as ‘a shared sense of humanness and vulnerability.’ As in her entire body of work … Fair’s latest sculptures blur boundaries between the mundane and the metaphysical, representing an artistic vision clearly in full bloom.”

For the deCordova commission, Fair built the forms in resin and foam at her Somerville studio, then sent them out to have rubber molds created for casting in a material yet to be chosen, she says. For more information, see www.toryfair.com.