Three Arches

Located in the Main Lobby of Duke University Hospital entrance off Erwin Road.

Harvey K. Littleton

Three Arches

Glass
1983

While studying sculpture and ceramics in college, Harvey Littleton worked in the summer for his father, the director of research at Corning and one of the inventors of Pyrex. Littleton cast his first sculpture in glass in 1942, before he was drafted in the army. It was not until he returned to the United States in 1946 that he cast a second glass sculpture.

Mr. Littleton’s experimenting with glass led him to establish the first hot glass art program in the United States at the University of Wisconsin in 1962, where he was a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art Education. At the present time, almost 100 American schools offer courses in glassblowing. After retiring from the University of Wisconsin faculty, Littleton set up a studio in Spruce Pine, NC, where he hosts visiting artists.

Littleton's loops of glass tubes, permeated with vibrant colors, encourage people to look into, not through the glass. The molded solid columns have been heated and swung to elongate, then are twisted, sawed by a diamond saw, and polished. The effect is that of flowing water or roots encased in gleaming ice.

Harvey Littleton was designated a living treasure by the state of North Carolina in 1993.

This sculpture was gifted to Duke university Hospital in memory of Julia Forlines "by friend and family in rememberance to her commitment to Duke, her love for the arts, and her courage in the face of adversity, with hope that all those who see it may experience the strength which guided her life."