Bernard Langlais: Restoring and Preserving the Legacy
Created and produced by Yoke and John DiGiorgio
A Nature’s Art Productions Film
In the last eleven years of his life, Bernard Langlais poured his physical and creative energies into the construction of more than 65 monumental wood sculptures, which he erected in the fields, ponds, and on the rocky rises of his property in Cushing, Maine. Joining the ranks of vernacular art environment builders, he produced evolving, interrelated, site-specific works harnessed to the topography and history of his rural locale. After Langlais’s death in 1977, his widow, Helen Friend Langlais, remained on the property and cared for his artworks for more than three decades. Mrs. Langlais’s 2010 bequest of her estate to Colby College included her husband’s unique built environment. The Colby College Museum of Art has since formed a partnership with Kohler Foundation, Inc. of Kohler, Wisconsin and the Georges River Land Trust of Rockland, Maine to ensure the preservation of Langlais’s art and land.