On weddings....

So I got married this week after a 13 year hiatus as a single woman.
It was a marvelous weekend in Boston and we were all a bit carried away with the proceedings which, not surprisingly, centered on a fine piece of public sculpture in the Public Garden. When we decided to get hitched last December there was no hesitation as to where the ceremony should be- in the Garden in front of my favorite sculptor's work there, Anna Coleman Ladd's "Triton Babies" fountain. It connects my two lives together and even David has come to view these garden babes affectionately.
The piece features Anna's two daughters, Vernon and Gabriella, age 6 and 4, laughing and playing in the water, though the guidebooks tell you that the frolicking kiddies are of the male and female persuasion. I've learned to expect sloppy scholarship when it comes to public art.
This was the first permanent piece made by a woman to go into the Garden, and, after it was in place, only one more by a man was installed there and that had been commissioned two years earlier. Why? That was the original question that led to my obsessive and tedious (to others) digging to find the truth behind the women sculptors of the Garden. That search has made my life infitely rich and is the reason I chose to be married with my best bronze friends in attendance.
I've been working on a book about the women sculptors for the past five years, but have recently widened the scope and now hope to write the history of Boston through its public sculptures. Look for it one day in a bookstore near you...