OLD LYME — Lyme Academy of Fine Arts has announced the appointment of internationally-renowned sculptor Chad Fisher as the new Charlotte Colby Danly Sculpture Chair. This appointment marks a major step in Lyme Academy’s effort to build the premier figurative sculpting program in the United States.
Set to launch in Fall 2023, this multi-year, intensive program further expands the breadth of the Academy’s fine arts curriculum, while also deepening the commitment to its mission.
“I am beyond thrilled and honored to be the incoming Sculpture Chair at Lyme Academy,” states Fisher.
He continues, “To teach is to provide students with a space to grow emotionally, intellectually, and experientially. As an art educator, I am here to help amplify each student’s dream through a very human and personal experience, and to provide the tools that are necessary for them to grow expansively, both artistically and professionally.”
Fisher’s own work is informed by a decade of rigorous academic training. This includes a long-term apprenticeship with Gary Weisman, a respect for art’s lineage, and a comprehensive understanding of rediscovered historic design principles, many based in the 19th century Parisian figurative arts tradition.
In 2017, Fisher, along with his father and wife, built their own bronze foundry in Pennsylvania. Fisher Sculpture has since received commissions from the Philadelphia Flyers, Chicago Bears Football Club, and the Philadelphia 76ers, and has produced bronze and stone works for numerous military memorials nationwide.
Fisher’s experience and dynamic plan for the new sculpture program honor the vision of Lyme Academy’s founder, the celebrated sculptor Elisabeth Gordon Chandler (d. 2006.) The Chandler Studio, the future home of Fisher’s classes, with its dramatic skylights, north-light windows, 18 ft. ceilings, and 1600 sq. ft. of work space, is one of many state-of-the-art studios on the Academy’s four-acre campus.
The Sculpture Chair to which Fisher has been appointed is the creation of Lyme Academy alumna Charlotte Colby Danly, who generously donated $1 million to help others learn sculpting in the figurative tradition, as she herself did under the tutelage of Elisabeth Chandler.
Danly’s support of the Academy is inspired in part by the commitment and quality of its current, thriving student body, and the significant place the school holds in an area long renowned as a center for the arts.
Danly’s philanthropic act has been complemented in 2022 by two major contributions to the Academy’s holdings.
In May, the Karlheinz Kronberger Collection of 19th-Century French Bronzes, numbering well over 200 museum-quality objects, was donated to the Academy. More recently, the National Academy of Design in New York made a long-term loan of 28 plaster casts. Both collections will provide students with an inspiring study collection, likely unmatched in any teaching institution in the United States.
Along with Fisher’s much-anticipated classes, they support Lyme Academy’s status as a destination site for the next generation of figurative artists.
To learn more about classes and programs offered at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, visit http://www.lymeacademy.edu.
Editor’s Notes: i) The mission of the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts is to teach the foundational skills of drawing, painting, and sculpture in the figurative tradition. By its commitment to training students in these skills and an engagement with contemporary discourse, the Academy will empower a new generation of artists. Through its programs, the Academy is committed to enriching the cultural life of the community.
ii) This article is based on a press release issued by Lyme Academy of Fine Arts.