The Attendant Spirit

The late Ruth Duckworth's sculpture "Attendant Spirit." Photo by Alycia Rockey/Daily Eastern News

By Dan Hagen

Afternoon clouds gather above Ruth Duckworth's sculpture Attendant Spirit on the north side of Eastern’s Doudna Fine Arts Center. 

Dan Hagen portrait by Jordan Boner

I like the calm, watchful quality of this work. I see it every morning and afternoon as I walk to my office. It has short wings, a mouth and a shield. This spirit soars, speaks, protects.
In October 2009, I broke out my new utility jacket and just attended the memorial event for the famous modernist sculptor, held in front of her bronze Attendant Spirit installation at the new Doudna here on campus. 
I never met her, but while walking to my office I always found myself slowing to admire and soak up the serene, watchful quality of this work.
Dean Jeff Lynch noted that, weirdly, the sculpture had been dedicated at the same spot one year before to the very hour, in similar gray, wet weather. As he talked, the clouds broke and the 30 or so of us were bathed in sunlight. Synchronicity strikes again.
Duckworth resisted naming her works, preferring to number them, but the state insisted she name this one, her last major installation (and a copy of a smaller sculpture that lived with her in her kitchen). She said she thought her art had a meditative, healing quality. And that’s what I see in it.
“Attendant Spirit,” indeed. 
Some kind of a cosmic wink there.