Watershed Bell added to Sleeping Lady's Art Collection
Dedication November 7, 2002
Local art supporters, partners and Sleeping Lady staff joined artist Thomas Jay to celebrate the installation of Sleeping Lady's newest art addition on Thursday, November 7. The Watershed bell, sculpted and cast by Jay in 2001- 2002, was moved from the Watershed Art Display in downtown Leavenworth, to it's home just outside Sleeping Lady's Salmon Gallery.
The Watershed Art project focused on the Wenatchee River Watershed's present and historical diversity, and at the same time, its fragile natural environment. A group of internationally known artists gathered at Sleeping Lady in two one-week periods in 2001 to paint, sculpt, photograph, draw and write about the Wenatchee River Watershed. The purpose of the project was to raise the level of the public's awareness of nature and its relationship to their lives and help establish the Leavenworth area as a nationally recognized center for the arts.
For thousands of years bells have called human communities to witness joy and sorrow.
In alarm, solemnity and celebration bells “sounded” revelation be it war, weddings, holidays or
wakes. Ironically, in times of war village bells were often requisitioned and melted down to
cast cannons so villagers sometimes buried beloved bells to hide them from the powers that be.
In the orient it was not uncommon for itinerant bell founders to erect screens in
front of temples for which they had been commissioned to cast bells, inviting the faithful to toss their jewelry and spare copper implements into a heap. When the requisite amount of
metal was acquired (sometimes tons!) the bell maker assembled his materials - clay, bricks, egg
whites, ox hair, charcoal and sand - and built his furnace, drying oven and casting pit, proceeding
to cast the bell on the temple grounds.
Bell bronze is traditionally an alloy of copper and tin, five parts copper to one tin.
Sometimes zinc and lead as well as silver and gold were added to the alloy. This bell, the
Watershed Bell, is cast in silicon bronze, a “modern” alloy of copper and silicon that is proving to be a fine bell metal. True bell metal is never less than 85% copper. The addition of tin and
other metals strengthens its crystal structure and makes it more fluid so it can be poured. A
bell must withstand ringing as well as ring true.
Think of the edge of this bell as the rim of our salmon sewn world resounding to the
trueness of your touch.
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