Dear
Friends,
Good morning. “We were a gruesome
combo,” Ginnie Saunders laughed as she remembered accompanying her sculptor
husband, Ashby, struggling on the violin. “It sounded like cats fighting,” she
added. The Sauders told this story as they led me through their barn/home on
Phillips Mill Road near New Hope.
Their son, Spencer, is a
“barnologist,” Ginnie told me. Spencer bought the beams and the stone
foundation from an 1814 barn in Wrightstown. Although their home is only
several years old, it resembles an old barn.
Ashby left a successful career in the real estate
business 30 years ago because his eyesight was failing. He has no peripheral
sight. Ashby has retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited condition that the Saunders
family has had since the 1700’s. Ginnie noticed two newspaper advertisements
offering instruction…one in violin and the other, sculpturing. “Ashby on the
violin sealed the deal,” Ginnie said, explaining his 30-year career as a sculptor.
And he is very accomplished. Four of
his pieces were exhibited in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
during its 50th anniversary in 1987. The “Sack Race” (1998) is a
life-sized statue of three children jumping about. It stands in Central Park in
Doylestown Township, thanks to the generosity of Byers Choice.
Ashby’s love of sculpture began when
he was a child in the loving (and firm) care of his mother. During Sunday
church service, she gave him clay to focus his thoughts [instead of disturbing
others around him…which is what I would have done].
Ginnie and Ashby’s home is filled with his statuary.
His studio lies behind a library accessed through a secret door. There’s a
replica of a violinist, inspired by his musical father. On the dining room
table is a sculpture of a young girl reading a book as a huge dinosaur peers
over her shoulder…the title, “Imagination.” Can you imagine what fun it would
be for kids to play on the statue if it were life size in some community park?
Typically, Ashby’s pieces are 18 inches tall and
cost between two and three thousand dollars. To help Trinity Episcopal Church
(Solebury) fund its pipe organ installation, Ashby cast 20 statures of the
“Maestro” (the conductor). He donated the profits of the sale to the church.
Ashby told me that Doylestown
Township has commissioned him to create a three-sided bronze monument, four
feet wide by eight feet high with 64 faces. It represents citizens who’ve made
a positive impact to the region from the American Revolution to the present.
Citizens have raised $40,000 of the $70,000 cost. If you want to help finish
the project, call Kate McGovern at
His works have been exhibited at
Phillips Mill, the Central Bucks Sculpture show, Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation
Hospital and the Princeton Medical Center. “I’m very lucky,” Ashby said. “I
love public art…people see it…it gives any artist tremendous satisfaction.”
I particularly enjoyed “Rush Hour,”
a depiction of three agitated commuters hailing taxis. Ashby captured the
stress of trying to get home after a long, trying day. Worried about the
anxiety that his statue had produced, Ashby soothed my feelings with a
delicious martini.
The Saunders will celebrate their 50th
anniversary in April. I wonder what would have happened to the marriage if
Ashby had insisted upon a career on the violin? Probably nothing…Ginnie is a
saint.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith