Converse Instructor Commissioned for Wofford Sculpture

A group of Wofford College professors banded together to commission a sculpture by Converse art professor Mac Boggs. “A Green Season” was formally accepted by Wofford September 19.

“A Green Season” was donated to Wofford by professors Linda Powers, Ana María Wiseman, Dennis Wiseman and retired professor Victor Bilanchone. The sculpture was designed as a piece of environmental art that will draw attention to the space around it.

“When we add a piece of sculpture to a landscape, it draws attention not only to itself, but to the setting as well and lets us look at how the two are related,” says Oakley Coburn, Dean of the library and Curator of Wofford’s art galleries. “This location is a grove of trees, which in the past simply has been an area we often have passed through without seeing. Now, the sculpture causes us to pause and look about. The elements echo forms of leaves and seed pods, branches and trunks. One piece literally embraces a large oak. Until the sculpture was installed, most of us probably had never noticed the tree. The sculpture was created for this specific location, and lets us see it with fresh eyes and spirit.”

Boggs' work appears in numerous collections throughout the US, including the presidential libraries of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Well known for his abstract paintings, steel sculptures, bronze work, computer graphics and architectural designs, Boggs continues a family tradition of ironwork. His great-grandfather was a blacksmith; both grandfathers and his father were welders and steelworkers. A graduate of the University of Kentucky, he earned his M.F.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Converse since 1970.

"A Green Season" helps to highlight Wofford’s growing emphasis on the arts. Wofford President Benjamin Dunlap says, “Much modern sculpture transforms our perception of the world by helping us see underlying structures and analogies. The different parts of ‘A Green Season’ do precisely that, echoing the natural forms around them during spring and summer and subsequently, during the fall and winter, making us think of what has been and will be again. A college education is about thinking as well as seeing, and this delightfully provocative work is a festive addition to our arboretum.”