Gardner, MA

Brian Meunier

http://brianmeunier.com/

Working primarily in sculpture for over forty years, artist Brian Meunier has developed a stylistic idiom incorporating elements from vernacular utilitarian design, specifically, pre-Industrial Revolution nautical architecture.

Meunier has traveled, lived, exhibited, lectured, and taught globally, in various programs around the world.  

Brian is currently Emititus Full Professor of Art, having retired from his teaching post at Swarthmore College in 2020, after 41 years of teaching.     

In addition to his work in sculpture, Meunier is also a fiction writer/author.  Penguin/Puttnam published his book, Pipiolo and The Roof Dogs in 2003, and another, Bravo, Tavo in 2006.

Meunier’s sculpture at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, “Angel”, was from a series of sculptures he created based on descriptions of early aviation. It is a fictional air craft, in homage to (Bartolomeu) Lourenço de Gusmão (December 1685 – 18 November 1724) who was a Portuguese born in Brazil priest and naturalist, who was an early pioneer of gliders and lighter-than-air airship designs.

"Angel: Wings for Fra Laurenco de Gusmão” is one of a series of sculptures inspired by the early history of aircraft.  Meunier read about a monk during the Italian Renaissance that invented and flew a glider across the Vatican courtyard.  He was then excommunicated by the Pope.  Afterwards, there were a number of reports across Europe of a “flying monk”.