The Vermont Arts Council and the Department of Buildings & General Services invite you to celebrate the permanent installation of sculpture by artist Gregory Miguel Gómez of Newtonville, MA and Putney, VT at the new Training Facility at the Vermont Fire Academy, 672 Academy Road, Pittsford, Vermont. A reception for the artist will be held on Friday, December 17th from 3:30 – 5:00 p.m.

The sculpture, entitled “Tools of Command” was commissioned through the Vermont Art in State Buildings Program. The Vermont Arts Council worked with a Local Art Selection Committee to select Goméz from a pool of 31 applicants. The Committee included:

Jim Litevich, Vermont Fire Academy
Peter Hack, Dept. of Buildings & General Services
Alan Brown, Architect, Dore & Whittier Architects, Inc.
Michael Skaza, VT Fire Academy
John Wood, Vermont Division of Fire Safety
Bob Hooker, Artist, Community Member
Beth Miller, Curator, Community Member

Once Gómez was selected, he worked with Committee members to develop a site-specific design to meet that goals of the program and the specific goals of the Committee for the space.
About the Artist & the Artwork

Gregory Miguel Gómez is a painter and sculptor from a family of physicians and scientists. He has lived many places: Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michigan, Havana Cuba, and Rochester, Minnesota before ultimately moving to Boston and Vermont. He received his undergraduate degree from Grinnell College and an MFA from Washington University, in St. Louis, Missouri. He has taught at the Maryland Institute, in Baltimore Maryland; The Rhode Island School of Design; and Wellesley College, before coming to Wheelock College, in Boston.

Gregory has exhibited his work in New York, Chicago, Washington DC, and Boston. Sources for his sculptures and paintings have been as historically and conceptually diverse as: scientific imagery, ancient cartography, and baseball scorekeeping. With his cast bronze relief sculpture he has moved to larger installations and has created works for public art sites. He has completed commissions for Harvard Medical School; The Challenger Learning Center in Tallahassee, Florida; and the Austin Branch Library in West Chicago, Illinois and Addison Elevated Train Station, near Wrigley Field, in Chicago, Illinois. He is also currently working on commission for Williamson Business College at Youngstown State University, in Ohio.

Tools of Command
The design for the new Vermont Fire Academy in Pittsford, Vermont employs water-jet cut aluminum to create relief silhouette images of firemen’s tools and equipment. The design honors the complexity and commitment to the task of fire fighting, as well as the history and tradition of fire fighting.

Tower Section
The architect’s design for the Fire Academy includes a light-gathering, two-story tower, over the entrance and reception area of the building. The Academy tower is an allusion to the traditional use of towers in firehouses, as a means for drying damp fire hoses, to prevent mildew and rotting. Firehouse towers continue to be used in this way in much of Vermont, as hoses are hoisted to drape down the length of the tower. While the Academy tower is non-functional, I have made use of this architectural feature by creating a relief version of drying hoses. Running much of the length of the west wall of the tower, the relief sculpture will greet visitors to the Academy with a piece of this simple yet efficient tradition. The representation of hoses of different diameters and linkage sizes suggests the diversity of personalities and backgrounds of firefighters, who must come together to live and work in close proximity in the firehouse, as they answer the call to fire fighting service. Six looped hoses are represented down the wall, with a seventh space left vacant. This presents a naturalistic, randomized array of hoses, while the vacant spot can also suggest a firefighter lost in the act of firefighting.

Corridor Section
As one leaves from the tower area, the north side corridor wall is the location for the next section of relief sculptures. Placed between classroom doors, these dark colored aluminum silhouettes also protrude from the wall to create interesting shadows, as the echoes of the forms. The sculpture for the corridor is designed in four sections to suggest an appropriate model of the Firehouse command structure. This model places the Fire Chief in the center, at the pinnacle of the command structure with oversight of: Fire Attack, Search and Rescue, Water Supply, and Venting. The work represents information pertinent to The Academy users and staff. The fire equipment represents current technologies as well as some more traditional tools of firefighting.

Thus the title, Tools of Command, alludes to the necessary command structure, as well as the science of firefighting, through the deliberate use of instruments and a course of action in combating a fire.