Vermont Sculpter Fisk Wins Decordova Prize August 28, 2002 - The Boston Globe By Christine Temin Lars-Erik Fisk, a 31-year-old Vermont sculptor, is the winner of the DeCordova Museum's third annual Rappaport Prize. The $20,000 award, recognizing noteworthy achievement and creative promise, is the largest annual public prize to an individual artist given by a Massachusetts institution. If Fisk's name sounds familiar, it may be because he was in the 1999 DeCordova show "On the Ball: The Sphere in Contemporary Sculpture." Or it may be because he's the art director for the rock band Phish. Phish concerts can attract as many as 70,000 fans; Fisk's job is to make the big, empty spaces where they're held welcoming, which he has done by digging ponds, creating Chinese gardens, and erecting whimsical, escapist sculpture. His "DeCordova Ball" is on a rather steep hill on the museum grounds, looking like it might break away and roll down. It's covered with red brick, as the museum itself is, and has slate and copper details similar to those on the DeCordova's building, which, in a way, it summarizes. People once believed the world was flat, not round. Flat seemed simpler, easier to understand. For Fisk, it's the sphere that simplifies, rolling up various aspects of life into tidy balls. He frequently makes site-specific pieces: His "John Deere Ball," made of actual tractor parts, is in a rural, agricultural setting in Minnesota. He also borrows commercial imagery: His "UPS Ball" has the shipping company's famous logo. Fisk parked the piece in a friend's yard, and someone driving by assumed it was a real UPS drop-off point. Some of his vehicular balls - the "Volkswagenball" and "School Bus Ball," - have doors and seats from the real thing. The pieces pose technical difficulties; it's quite a feat to get car doors to curve. Money for the prize comes from the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation. Jerome and Phyllis Rappaport are Lincoln residents and longtime DeCordova supporters. The museum's curators select the winner. Explaining the selection of Fisk, DeCordova director of curatorial affairs Rachel Rosenfield Lafo said: "We think he has great potential. And these things are time-consuming, expensive to make, and hard to sell." To save on shipping costs, Fisk has led an itinerant life for the last two years, transporting his pieces himself. He's going to use the prize, which has no conditions except that the artist give something to the museum, to stay put for a while, setting up a studio in Burlington, Vt. "I'm excited by the entirely new set of options that a studio will afford me in terms of raw space and a more solid array of supplies," he said. Article © 2002 The Boston Globe