[V]ermont State Curator David Schutz knows more about history than hashtags. But when social media began commenting on the recent removal of the Montpelier capitol-topping Ceres statue as part of a $2 million dome restoration project, he quickly plugged into the buzz.
“People expressed very sincere disappointment,” he says, “and wondered what we were going to do.”
The state’s answer: Let everyone see for themselves.
Schutz, joined by Gov. Phil Scott, visited Barre’s Vermont Granite Museum on Thursday to invite the public to watch the creation of a new statue from now until a crane installs the completed work atop the Statehouse by the end of the year.
The goddess of agriculture has crowned the capitol building since 1858, when Brattleboro artist Larkin Mead designed a 14½-foot-tall sculpture carved out of wood.
After sun and snow rotted the figure over the following eight decades, the now late Sergeant-at-Arms Dwight Dwinell whittled a replica out of Ponderosa pine in 1938. But the weather has been equally harsh on the second statue and its perch, requiring the state to contract with Engelberth Construction this year to repair and regild what’s believed to be the oldest original roof in the state.
As workers finish the dome, Calais sculptor Chris Miller is fashioning a new Ceres out of sturdier Honduran mahogany based on Mead’s original drawings and current-day Montpelier artist Jerry Williams’ scale model.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime project,” Miller says, “and I feel very strongly that it should be in a place where people can witness it happening.”
The public is invited to the Vermont Granite Museum on the Barre-Montpelier Road during its regular hours Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. or any time the front garage door is open and studio lights on.
Scott used Thursday’s event to announce he’ll give the annual Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts to Miller and Williams at a Vermont Arts Council program Nov. 14. The chief executive then borrowed the sculptors’ tools to try his hand at carving.
“I can’t think of a more appropriate venue than here in Barre,” said Scott, whose uncle worked at the museum building that once housed the Jones Brothers granite manufacturing company. “I hope many Vermonters will take advantage of this opportunity.”
Everyone else can log onto the companion website CeresOnAStick.com. The title came about when Montpelier resident Brenda Greika, seeing the dome without the statue, took a Facebook picture of the capitol with a paper Ceres cutout she placed on a stick and photographed so it looked like it was back on top. That, in turn, has inspired others to take #CeresOnAStick pictures at such locales as London’s Buckingham Palace and Paris’ Eiffel Tower.
“This is obviously our ploy to engage younger people,” Schutz says. “I don’t know the first thing about hashtags, so I am promoting this without any real ability to accomplish it myself.”
The historian has a better hold on a Friends of the Vermont State House fundraiser that’s selling chocolate Ceres-on-a-Stick lollipops crafted by the Nutty Steph’s confection company.
“We have been impressed with the number of Vermonters who have missed the statue,” Schutz says. “We know she is an important figure and we want to do her honor.”
