Remembering Artist Elliot Offner

I was delighted this week to learn about the life and work of Elliot Offner, a Jewish American sculptor who taught at Smith College while I attended there. Although I never had the pleasure of knowing him personally, I befriended the great blue heron he created– for the 18-year-old me there was no more peaceful a place on Earth than in that botanical garden.

Since Offner passed in 2010, his family set up a website to showcase his work. There I learned that my feathered friend has a sister who has become a local legend in the courtyard outside the Darien Public Library in Connecticut.

Also, the Holocaust memorial at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York and the Hirschhorn Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington each house a piece from Offner’s work on Holocaust studies and Auschwitz. The sculpture pictured above is featured on his website.

Time for a road trip I believe…