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Chapungu sculptures have been exhibited and toured all over the world since 1962. Roy Guthrie established the Gallery Shona Sculpture in Harare, Zimbabwe (then called Rhodesia) in 1970 and the Chapungu Sculpture Park in the same city in 1985. The role of the park was not just to exhibit the works, but to support and keep the artists working.
Guthrie writes: “‘Chapungu’ is the Shona word for the Bateleur eagle, still found in many of the low-lying areas of Africa, including along the Zambezi valley and the Limpopo Valley in Zimbabwe.
For the Shona people it is a protecting bird, a spirit bird to the Shona revere, much as Native Americans revered the bald eagle. The Bateleur is depicted over and over again in their sculptures.
In 2001, Roy Guthrie exhibited Chapungu sculptures at botanical gardens across the country. As the sculptures weighed between half a ton and four tons, with heights from three feet to 11 feet, the pieces required forklifts and cranes and were installed on logs to protect the garden grounds.
He searched for a North American base of operations and established a relationship with the arts community in Loveland, Colo., which happens to be home of the largest juried sculpture show in North America, with the largest concentration of brass foundries in the U.S. devoted to sculpture.
“The Sculpture Park’s design was the result of an in-house competition challenging DTJ designers to think outside of the box. Eight teams participated and the outcome was a display of diverse and innovative designs." —Robb Williamson, ASLA
McWhinney Enterprises, a long-time supporter of the arts and the Loveland community, offered a prominent park site—Chapungu Sculpture Park at Centerra, which will be home to the Chapungu Cultural Arts Centre.
McWhinney Enterprises is the developer of Centerra, a 3,000-acre master planned, mixed-use community in Northern Colorado, 35 miles north of Denver, just south of Ft. Collins. Centerra’s six districts are compact and integrated land use developments with strong pedestrian connections, a range of housing in close proximity to jobs, shopping, entertainment, and park space.
Roy and Marcey Guthrie own the Chapungu Gallery in the Promenade Shops at Centerra, some 60 specialty shops and restaurants.
The Chapunga Sculpture Park, which opened November 10, 2006, is the first permanent collection of Chapungu sculpture in the U.S., although pieces will be rotated over time.
Over the last four years, DTJ DESIGN of Boulder, Colo. has master planned the park and brought to fruition the first two phases of the park development. Phase three awaits. Their multidisciplinary firm of architects, engineers, landscape architects and planners began the design work with an intrafirm charrette consisting of eight teams, with 3-4 members per team.
“The principals at DTJ were excited to involve as many people together on the teams to get such a variety of ideas,” explained Robb Williamson, ASLA.
The firm saw the design competition as a team-building effort. It was pro bono effort by the firm and a way to give back to the city. The firm normally would have had three to four people working on the design, but the park and the city benefited from 30 creative minds instead of a few. Each team presented four to five large 3-D CAD sketches and various plans and drawings.
“It was almost like doing the project eight different times,” Mr. Williamson adds.
The focus was particularly on the northern end of the park, which has the most architectural features, including the design for the cultural center.
The designers had to consider everything from the cultural heritage of Zimbabwe to maintenance issues, loading zones for large trucks (for moving sculptures), restrooms and auditorium seating. All the members of the team got into areas that were not necessarily their disciplines.
While there was a consensus on the “winning” design, some elements or ideas from other teams were incorporated.
The southern half of the project includes natural paths and trails through large bosques of cottonwoods along a natural drainage area. There was revegetation of the drainageways and eradication of noxious weeds and invasive plants. The park has a mix of natural drainageways, but also an engineered ditch with open-sloped banks that takes water from farm irrigation. This canal has several bridge crossings.
There are seating and sculpture viewing areas and a large bridge on the south end that leads to a retail center, restaurants and parking. There are also steel pedestrian bridges with wood decks.
The restaurants connect to the southern plaza, which looks out on a pond and places to sit and view the sculptures. There are 80 sculptures, eight groups of 10, each representing a subject, e.g., the elders; family; animals; children; spirits; life in Africa.
There are stairs and ramps here down to the trails, including ADA access. Surfacing types and finishes are exposed aggregate concrete, colored concrete and DG trails.
Plant selection was based on four-season interest and low-water use.
The northern third of the park is closest to the major roads and is thus a more manicured area. The topography plays a role. Very little of the land is flat. The central green is here and is the heart of future development. It allows for large gatherings, including summer concerts. Kids flock to the top of the grassy hill to play. In the winter they sled the hill.
Interpretive signage is throughout the park. The signage explains the art motifs, including women, the elders, the animals, the spirits and life in Africa.
The biggest challenge for the firm was to give the client enough flexibility to plan for the future development of the park. Phase three development includes removing the present sculptural landform and replacing it with a three-level cultural facility. The Chapungu Cultural Arts Centre will be home to the works of the African sculptors and a hub for arts education. The lower level of the Centre will house a theater for educational and theatrical performances. At this level will be a small classroom and indoor workshop where Chapungu artists will teach stone sculpting and art classes. Adjacent to these spaces will be an outdoor plaza. The gallery of Chapungu works, a small café and gift shop will be on the main level. The main level gallery will have a two-story rotunda open to the upper level, with natural light from skylights. The upper level will contain offices, a library, conference room and a community room.
All spaces will offer views of the great lawn and Sculpture Park.
There will be an outdoor performance stage and an open-air African village will offer a glimpse into rural African life.
A dramatic waterfall, inspired by Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls, adds a dramatic touch.
The east side of the Centerra development will have a higher density of homes in the future, along with hotels and conference centers, etc. The land uses have been set in place, but the economy has put on hold some of that development.
Source: Skulpturen aus Zimbabwe. Dr. Volker Wild. Dr. Wild collected Shona stone sculptures while living in Zimbabwe from 1982 to 1993. “I focused on the renowned artists of the first generation and those works by other artists of exceptional individual quality.”
In Paris in the 1930s, British national Frank McEwan was intrigued by the influence of African art on modern European painting and sculpture. While living in Southern Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, in the 1950s, he desire to promote and grow the creative potential of African artists. In 1957 in Harare, the capital, McEwan established the National Gallery workshop to inspire and encourage young and talented African stone sculptors.
In South Africa there was not a tradition of stone sculpture, according to Dr. Wild. Wild explains:
“… a quick glance at the last 2,000 years of Africa’s history of art shows the whole of Southern Africa had little in the way of artifacts compared to West and Central Africa. It was too sparsely populated and had no massive kingdoms, whose power could be seen represented in its art. Only Great Zimbabwe, Monomutapa’s kingdom, had cultic stone eagle figures, but its sculpting tradition perished with the kingdom. In its desire to strengthen the nation’s cultural heritage the postcolonial government invented a link between this past tradition and contemporary sculpting. Art dealers have jumped on this bandwagon by frequently making use of this fictitious connection for marketing purposes.”
McEwan directed his young artists to draw inspiration from the mythology of their Shona people, and thus, the term Shona sculpture was born.
In 1965 the first exhibition of these stone works abroad was held. In 1968, some pieces were exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art, and then exhibited at the Musée Rodin in Paris.
Some of the artists developed their own styles, some borrowing from modern European art styles—minimalism, cubism, for example, but the art sculptures were considered something special—Zimbabwe stone sculpture. Shona sculptures achieved greater cache when in 1965 the white settlers declared their independence from the British Crown. Britain imposed sanctions, isolating Rhodesia economically and culturally. The art drew even more attention after the country’s independence in 1980, the time Dr. Wild asserts when this art movement reached its zenith.
As younger artists replaced the old guard, there was a shift to larger works and better tools (harder chisels), allowing the artists to work harder stones—springstone, lepidolite, and verdite. The artists began combining wood and stone, and some works embraced abstract forms, i.e., the African imagery was fading.
“Most of the leading artists from the early years have died,” writes Wild. “Pieces by the leading representatives of the early period seem all the more valuable. It was their quality that earned Zimbabwean stone sculpture its international reputation.”
Project Team
Raleigh, North Carolina
Francisco Uviña, University of New Mexico
Hardscape Oasis in Litchfield Park
Ash Nochian, Ph.D. Landscape Architect
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