Hancock's Angel

I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw Walker Hancock’s Pennsylvania Railroad War Memorial in the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. But seeing that statue is not a thing you forget. It stands nearly 40 feet high amid tall columns and, if you happen to be a kid to begin with, looking up into the face of the Archangel Michael towering above you as he lifts the body of a fallen soldier out of the flames of war, you are impressed. I didn’t know anything about sculpture back then, let alone about Walker Hancock, but I remember standing there looking up, up, up. It is not a thing you forget.

Many years later I saw the angel in the movie Witness – one of my favorite movies (tell me the truth, has there ever been a hotter scene in a movie than Harrison Ford teaching Kelly McGillis to dance in a barn by lantern light to the tune of Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World”? No -- there hasn’t.) After I moved to Gloucester I volunteered to work Sunday afternoons at the Gloucester City Hall Sculpture Show in 1998. On my first day there I was standing in the middle of Kyrouz Auditorium when I turned around and there, far above, overlooking the entire show, was Hancock’s Angel cradling the dead soldier. It took my breath away and I remembered my first encounter many years earlier. The statue was a plaster model that was later cast in bronze for the Railroad Station in Philadelphia but I had no idea that it had been sculpted in Gloucester, my much loved new home.

In the course of the exhibition I was fortunate to meet Mr. Hancock who passed away a few months later at the age of 97. All I knew about him was that he was a great sculptor who had carved a magnificent angel that I loved. He was a quiet, soft-spoken gentle man and I consider myself fortunate to have met him.

In 2002 I was asked to design the exhibition poster for the North Shore Arts Association’s Remembrance: A Tribute exhibition and performance, to honor the first anniversary of September 11. I chose Hancock’s fallen soldier as the centerpiece of the design. It was an honor to be able to claim a tiny connection of my own to this great work.

Last night I attended a Christmas gathering that was held in Walker Hancock’s old studio in Lanesville. My friend Rebecca is spending the winter there writing the final draft of her dissertation on Anna Hyatt Huntington, the sculptor of Gloucester’s Joan of Arc statue. What an extraordinary place to write such a thing!

As we were sitting in the room that was once Hancock’s studio sipping wine and talking I looked up at the vaulted ceiling high above. Hanging from the ceiling was the original block and tackle equipment used to move huge blocks of marble in and out of the studio. "Is this the room in which Hancock sculpted the angel," I asked Rebecca. Rebecca smiled and said it certainly was.

Wow. What can you say? Right here in this room that glorious piece was birthed and brought to life. Right here. "Tell me something," I said to her, "do you believe that great creative energy stays in a place even after the artist is gone?"

She nodded. "Absolutely," she said, "you can feel it here. When I’m here alone working it’s all around me."

All my life I’ve wondered what happens to the energy, the life force, of powerful people once they leave this world. I don’t believe it leaves with them. It seems to me that powerful creativity creates a field of energy that is not easily destroyed. It is these energy fields that account for the sense of sacred space that people speak of experiencing.

Later in the evening I wandered alone down into Hancock’s library. There are still shelves full of books, his desk, and harpsichord in the room but, more than anything, there is the sense that something great once happened here. In this place one of the earliest works of art I ever fell in love with was conceived and brought to life. There is magic in places like that. It is a magic that lingers. Hancock’s Angel has been a presence throughout my life. Spending a few hours in the space where it first entered the world was a Christmas miracle for me. It was magic.

Thanks for reading.