ON THE COVER

DAPHNE VOM BAUR

John Safer (CC ’70) takes his sculpture to new heights

Within the past several decades, science has demonstrated that scale is a unique and important quality. It has been shown that a change in magnitude means something more than a larger or smaller duplication of an original concept. Sculptors have known this intuitively for many thousands of years. ASCENT, pictured on the cover of this issue of the Cosmos Journal, will stand 70 feet high before the new National Air and Space Museum complex at Dulles Airport. Its design and magnitude are a fitting tribute to the museum and its vision.

Ascent, by John Safer. Inset photo by Geoffrey Hodgdon. Cover photo by Kathryn Scott.

This is a polished, stainless steel, abstract work of art, which allows it to imply something more than a specific image. The message inherent in the upward soaring sculpture is that of humanity’s unending struggle for improvement . . . the struggle to be free from the earthly bonds of gravity and, by implication, from all bonds, then to rise into the heavens.

The National Air and Space Museum may well symbolize the best of America. It puts on display the images and machines that show America’s unending love affair with flight and space exploration. The Smithsonian Institution’s new Museum at Dulles will be named for Steven Udvar-Hazy, whose donation made it possible to begin the construction of the Museum. Udvar-Hazy, a refugee, knew that flight and freedom are synonymous.

ASCENT is the creation of John Safer, who has gained international acclaim as a sculptor, and whose works stand in museums, galleries, universities, and embassies throughout the world. Although Safer trained in law at Harvard, and spent most of his professional life as a banker, culminating his career by serving as chairman of the board of NationsBank, DC, he has never deviated from his dedication to art as the central focus of his life.

Now retired from the banking world, Safer is busier than ever fulfilling commissions for sculptures ranging from the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego to Hofstra University on Long Island. His career change has not varied his lifelong commitment to some basic artistic goals. “It is my hope,” he says, “that people who look at my work will feel uplifted and inspired. Through my sculptures, I try to make people feel more at one with themselves and the universe in which they live.”

Daphne vom Baur (CC ’97) is the associate editor for art for the Cosmos Journal.

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