"TREASURED MOMENTS" Bronze, Carnegie Library, 2007
To learn more about Lynn Haste and her works: Visit www.lynnhaste.com

LOCAL ARTIST LYNN HASTE By NIKA HANCOCK

"I had always been told that you couldn't make it as
an artist,” local artist Lynn Haste said. But Haste chose not to listen and now has three bronze public art installations in the Bryan area.

Most recently, her 2007 piece entitled “Treasured Moments” depicts Andrew Carnegie reading to two children on a bench outside the Carnegie Library in Downtown Bryan. Across the street, “The Bryan Bomber” talks to children about baseball outside the LaSalle Hotel where it was installed in 2005. The seven foot tall “Viking Spirit” stands outside Bryan High School, a commission of the Class of 2001, and an object of some excitement with his 2003 abduction and return. Although the artist has commissions outside of town, Haste says, “It will always be here that means the most to me.”

Haste begins with the end in mind when creating her pieces. She sculpts on a trailer bed because the pieces will have to be transported. Her sculptures begin with metal interior supports called armature, and then the artist adds clay using a scaled-down model as a daily reference. In some cases, Haste has used actual people to model for her during the creation process, as with the children in both Downtown Bryan installations. However, when creating Thor for “Viking Spirit”, she did not use a human model but created him and all his intricate details completely from her imagination.

Once the clay sculpture is complete, it is taken to a mold-maker. Transporting the clay object to a mold-maker in another town is a delicate matter. Haste had some challenges taking the Viking to Houston and at one point thought that it was completely ruined during the trip.

The mold is a layered rubber substance encased in plaster that is cut into pieces and taken to the foundry. The foundry creates yet another mold and pours molten bronze into the pieces, and then assembles the pieces into the statue. Finally, the statue returns to be installed at its location.

According to Padraic Fisher, Executive Director at the Arts Council of Brazos Valley, the public really enjoys the interactive quality of the pieces in Downtown Bryan. You can sit on the bench with Carnegie, hug the children, and take pictures with them as if they are your friends. “I love to see the public enjoy it. I’ve been able to come down here a couple of times during crowded events and see people crawling all over them. It’s so rewarding, it just makes it so much more worthwhile.” The legacy Haste hopes to leave behind with her works is in creating a sense of place, simply so that people can say, “We’re all going to meet at the statue!”

In 2008, Haste hopes that partnerships will be formed to bring more of her work to Bryan. Her current project is a larger-than-life-size statue of World War II hero Gen. James Earl Rudder.