"The actual physical labor of putting that much clay together is tremendous, if you can imagine. No, you can't imagine [laughs], but that's going to be an awesome experience. Maybe I'll write a book about it."

Glenna Goodacre

Chances are you have one of Glenna Goodacre's works in your home, or car, perhaps even your pocket. In 1998, Goodacre became one of the few independent artists ever to have her design chosen by the U.S. Mint to appear on an American coin; her depiction of Sacagawea graces the gold-plated dollar coin released in February 2000. But this was just one of many high-profile projects for Goodacre, one of the most successful American sculptors of the 20th century. One of her best-known works is the Vietnam Women's Memorial, which stands near the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Today, Goodacre is hard at work in her Santa Fe, New Mexico studio on her most ambitious project yet, the Philadelphia Irish Famine Memorial, to be unveiled near Penn's Landing in Philadelphia in 2002. O'Connell Street spoke with Goodacre by phone on St. Patrick's Day.

How familiar were you with the Irish famine when you first decided to compete for this commission?
[Laughs] Not very familiar, I hate to admit. Of course, we had that in social studies, probably, in high school, and I'm sure I knew about it but not a great deal about it. So when I received the letter asking for entries then I got busy and started reading about it and learning about it.

What did you do to learn more - did you rely solely on books?
On books and some tapes. I was first of all impressed with the millions of people involved; I mean, millions died, million left [Ireland] -- it's not a small, isolated incident that [the memorial organizers] wanted to be portrayed and I realized the [level of] interest of everyone -- I think everyone I know has some sort of Irish heritage, a little Irish blood way, way back So I realized the human interest in it too. So it's interesting to read about and distressing at the same time.

Was there anything specific you learned in that process that inspired the design?
Well, as I said, the numbers. And when I start to think about a project, instead of drawing, I do more sketching in the clay, and I first wanted -- which I kept through the whole design of the maquette [model] -- to express the numbers of people involved. To me, one or two figures or a single statement wouldn't cut it, wouldn't be enough. So then I started making small figures and I [laughs], I kept on making them and kept on making them and I was up to about 35, and I've cut it down to about 25. And I wanted a piece that invited people to really study it, to walk around it, to think about it. As I said [at the recent event in Philly], not 'Oh, ho hum, another piece of public sculpture' and keep on walking. And I was impressed through my education about it and I wanted to tell other people about it. So if I could get that across in a bronze statute, that would be to everyone's benefit.

When you began that process of sketching in clay, as you put it, did you set out to have that sort of narrative flow through the sculpture that you have?
Yes. When they sent us the prospectus there were several pages that told a lot about the famine -- that possibly was the first knowledge, was the prospectus itself. Then they showed floor designs, so to speak, of the park and where [the memorial] is going to go. So I had direction, I knew where it was going to be, and a vision of a finished piece. So then I went to arranging figures in a narrative kind of way. And if you've seen the maquette, there's people digging the potatoes and the dying and the ill, and then leaving Ireland -- walking across a stone wall, symbolically -- and then going up as though they were getting on the ships that took them to America, and then landing in America. So it's something that evolves, and it will evolve hugely again when I start enlarging that to life-size people -- slightly larger than life-size -- and keeping the composition like I want it.

When you say evolve, do you mean that some elements of the design may change a little?
Bound to, bound to. In the first place, my boat is pitiful. I'm from Lubbock, Texas, we're fresh out of oceans, and docks and water and huge sailing ships, so I have a lot of research to do on the ship. This was just a study for competition, and I hope I've made that clear to the committee They love the roughness of the maquette, which I do too, the quote 'impressionistic feel' of the maquette, but to get it enlarged it's going to be a challenge to keep that much texture, which I'm hoping to do a good job of. And the surface around -- these are all technical things -- but the surface around that raises it, it's like a wedge, but it has a slight curve. If you look down from the top, it's kind of shaped like a boomerang. So I have to stay in limits because I want to ship it all in one piece from the foundry in Colorado. And technically I can't go above 12 feet high, 12 feet wide; length doesn't matter, so I always say it's about 25 feet long, but it may grow, you know, it might be 28 feet long. So yes, it will change.

Since you brought up the shipping, how exactly will this be transported? I assume you'll be working at your studio.
I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and it will be finished there, in my studio. Then the mold makers will come in, and the molds will be shipped -- maybe a couple of hundred molds, because it'll be so large, or more, maybe many more, I don't know -- and then the molds go to the foundry at Art Castings of Colorado, in Loveland, Colorado. Then the bronze sections will be assembled there and patinaed, and it will fit on a lowboy flatbed truck to the trucked to Philadelphia. I didn't want to have to weld and chase [smooth the surface] and patina on site -- it was just more logical to have it finished at the foundry where I knew exactly what I was going to get.

In preparing for a project like this, do you rely on history to tell you how to depict the figures, their physical and emotional states, or do you rely more on your instincts as an artist?
I think I do both. I have some period costumes and I will use models, and of course there are a lot of paintings that were done [during the famine], etchings, and I hope maybe this summer to go to Ireland to see the displays there in their museums on that period, and just become more and more knowledgeable about it. At the same time, I don't want to pick at it, to get it too detailed, because then I think people will be so caught up in the detail of it and lose the emotional appeal.

At the event in Philadelphia, you joked about suddenly feeling pressured to meet everyone's expectations. Was that just a joke or is this project a little intimidating for you?
It is intimidating. The [Women's] Vietnam Memorial was the largest piece I'd ever done, but it's just seven feet high and seven feet wide. And with the dimensions I just gave you [the Irish memorial will be] four, five times that size. That's intimidating, plus a time limit, and it's always difficult to sculpt by committee because in my contract with them there are three approval times. It's like when I painted portraits, your stomach gets in a knot before the committee arrives and you're just so anxious about what they're going to say. So it's always hard but I've done this for 35 years, I guess I'll get used to it in the next 35. [Laughs] If I live long enough. I work well under pressure. But I'll have to have several employees; the actual physical labor of putting that much clay together is tremendous, if you can imagine. No, you can't imagine [laughs], but that's going to be an awesome experience. Maybe I'll write a book about it.

When this is completed and in place, what is it you hope most that people will take away from it when they see it?
Ideally I would like people to stop, look at it, think about it, read about it from the copy that they're going to have along the walks. It won't need an explanation, I don't think -- obviously [some of the figures are] digging potatoes, and the crosses symbolize the death, and the suggestion of a ship, and then coming down the ramp, and the greeter on the shore all ready to welcome them. So I think it's relatively self-explanatory, but I want people -- especially Irish people, their descendents -- to look about it and think about their great-great-grandparents and what they suffered and what they went through. And to enjoy going back again and again.

Past installments of Q&A:
Leo Moran of the Saw Doctors
Thomas Cahill, author
Gary McMichael, Northern Ireland politician