About The Fountain Of Life

The brilliant career and tragically brief life of acclaimed American sculptor Helen Farnsworth Mears will be explored in a new musical written and produced in the artist’s hometown of Oshkosh, Wis., by an unprecedented collaboration of local talent. The Fountain of Life will have its world premiere at the city’s historic Grand Opera House on Fri., Oct. 31, with subsequent performances on Nov. 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 and 9. The creative team and performers are associated with the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and the city’s public and private high schools.

Written and produced by longtime Oshkosh resident Mary Hiles, The Fountain of Life tells the story of Helen Farnsworth Mears (1873-1916), an intense young woman who left her home in the booming Wisconsin lumber town in the early 1890s for Chicago to pursue her dream of becoming a sculptor. There she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, won a prize at the 1893 Columbian Exposition for her sculpture “Genius of Wisconsin” (now displayed in the state capitol in Madison) and attracted the attention of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the nation’s foremost sculptor at the time. (Several of his works can be seen at the Art Institute of Chicago and in the city’s parks and nationally.)

Mears worked closely with Saint-Gaudens as his first female assistant and was part of the Cornish Colony, the group of artists, writers and musicians who frequented Aspet, Saint-Gaudens’s home in Cornish, New Hampshire. The works she produced in that setting and elsewhere can now be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (a bas-relief of composer Edward MacDowell), the Smithsonian (a bust of medical pioneer Dr. William Morton), the Cornish Colony Gallery and Museum in Cornish (“Urn” and “Reclining Eve”), at Aspet itself (a bas-relief portrait of Saint-Gaudens), now a national historic site, at the Oshkosh Public Museum (“Dawn and Labor” and “The Joy Boy”) and the Paine Art Center in Oshkosh, which has the largest collection of Mears’s works (including a model commissioned by the State of Wisconsin for its capitol dome). Mears’s nine-foot-tall statue of temperance-movement firebrand Frances Willard, commissioned by the State of Illinois, is the only sculpture of a woman by a woman in the U.S. capitol’s Hall of Statuary in Washington, D.C.

Mears’s life, brimming with achievement and promise, was cut short in 1916 when the talented sculptor died of heart failure, reportedly brought on in part by malnutrition.
More than a year ago, the Paine Art Center in Oshkosh asked Hiles, who has written and performed shows on Shakespeare, to do a dramatization of Mears’s life for the city’s sesquicentennial. As she researched the life of Mears and talked with others in the Oshkosh arts community, the project grew into a major celebration of the city and one of its greatest artists.

“For Mears no distinction existed between art and life,” said Hiles, who wrote the book, lyrics, and some of the melodies for the musical. “The Fountain of Life celebrates that vision.”

Featured as Helen Farnsworth Mears will be 16-year-old singing sensation Bess Calhoun, a soprano who has won four state solo competitions and sang with the Tulsa Opera Company before her family moved to Oshkosh.

James Chaudoir of the UW-Oshkosh music department oversaw the arrangements and orchestrations executed by two of his former students, Erik Helm and Jay Thomas. Thomas and Chaudoir also composed some of the music. Chaudoir is a 17-time ASCAP winner (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and has been cited by the Wisconsin state assembly for music composition.

Oshkosh West High School Music Director Herb Berendsen and Oshkosh North High School Drama Teacher Jennifer Henselin are directing the 55 actors and 20 musicians from Oshkosh’s North, West and Lourdes high schools who will perform in the first such collaborative artistic production by the city’s public and private high schools. The Fountain of Life features 17 original songs and seven major production numbers. It will be presented in two acts.

All proceeds from the musical will go to Project S.O.A.R. (Special Opportunities for Artists Residencies), which supports artists-in-residence at Oshkosh public schools.

 

© 2003 Mary Hiles