George Greenamyer

George Greenamyer (born 1939, Cleveland, Ohio, US)^[1] is an American sculptor.

He received a BFA in 1963 from the Philadelphia College of Art and an MFA in 1969 from the University of Kansas. He was a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art for more than thirty years.^[1]

Heritage Schooner for Debra Lakin, September 30, 1998 (1998)

From 1988 to 1991, Greenamyer staged an annual event at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, Missouri called "Fire and Ice", in which he fashioned a massive ice sculpture that was then set ablaze over a bonfire. The event suffered several weather-related problems, however. In its first two years, unexpectedly cold weather kept the sculptures from melting properly for the crowd; in 1990 and 1991, unexpectedly warm weather caused the sculptures to melt before the actual event.^[2] Laumeier Sculpture Park later commissioned a piece from Greenamyer in memory of its Marketing Director, Debra Lakin: Heritage Schooner for Debra Lakin, September 30, 1998.^[3]

His sculpture Milwaukee was installed outside the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee's Golda Meir Library in 1989. It depicts agricultural and urban scenes from Milwaukee's history.^[4]

In 1991, University of Oregon athletic director Bill Byrne ordered a worker to cut down and remove a newly installed Greenamyer sculpture with a blowtorch. Byrne stated that he had found it "not in character with the rest of the front of the building". Greenamyer himself came to the scene, threatening to chain himself to the $54,000 sculpture to prevent its destruction. After mediation by UO president Myles Brand, it was agreed that the damage already done to the sculpture would be repaired, and it would be reinstalled on another location on campus.^[5]

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