DeWitt Godfrey, Attun
March 2024
Dix Park Conservancy, in partnership with Dix Park staff, worked with artist DeWitt Godfrey to bring a large sculpture to the historic Boylan Avenue entrance at Dix Park.
The artwork is an arrangement of eighty-plus Corten steel cylinders of various sizes and shapes. The low lying, horizontal sculpture will be original to Dix Park, configured to mimic the gentle curves of the landscape. Godfrey describes his steel sculptures as buttresses that perfectly support a unique space and create a relationship of dependency between landscape and object.
Project Partners
Artist Statement
My sculptures are grounded in responding to the environment of the physical site, the abstract geometry of the natural world, and community interaction. The interdisciplinary nature of my work – deeply rooted in the underlying geometry and mathematics of the natural world, the transformative nature of computational design, the role of research, and the history and context of the communities embedded in each site provides an accessible and engaging experience, without requiring specialized knowledge or training. The individual parts of each sculpture form a community of distinct, yet dependent, elements, resulting in a physical metaphor for the relationships, connections, and diverse individuals and communities that will experience my work. Innovative public art with unusual form in expected and unexpected locations helps us re-experience the familiar and reevaluate our place in the environment.
Attun will nestle in and conform to the topography of its location, curving across a shallow swale, holding space. Dix Park has a long and complex history, and I am moved that my work will be part of a reimagined Dix Park, that art can be part of a transformed landscape for the diverse and rich communities of Raleigh. I hope my work leaves viewers with a sense of wonder, an urge to explore, moments of discovery, and spirit of inquiry.
About Dewitt Godfrey
DeWitt Godfrey is a large-scale sculptor working in Hamilton, NY. His work employs carefully conceived structural processes, combining cutting edge digital technologies with custom craftsmanship, all grounded in empirical knowledge and experimentation. Natural geometries and systems - plant spores, seashells, honeycombs – inspire his sculptures; and through his unique process of packing and stacking of conic and cylindrical steel forms, simple rules give rise to extraordinary complexity.
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Godfrey completed his undergraduate work at Yale University, was a member of the inaugural group of CORE Fellows at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and received his MFA from Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Godfrey has received numerous grants and fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Arts Artist’s Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship, the Japan Foundation Artist’s Fellowship, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Fellowship. He also served as a Senior Advisor for the Terre Foundation of American Art’s program in Giverny, France.
Godfrey’s work can be found in several private and public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Brooklyn Museum, the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and Art OMI.
His commissioned work includes Capital, in Seattle, WA; Concordia for Lexarts, Lexington, KY; Quake, Cambridge Arts Council, Cambridge, MA; Enspire Traverse City, MI, and installations at Frederik Meijer Garden and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA; and the Kennedy Art Museum, Ohio University, Athens, OH.
