Lawrie Forbes has always had an interest and been a patron of the Arts. However, never tried his hand at creating art, until he crossed paths with Cecilia Jane Orr. An accident involving a train and footbridge brought these two together. A train passing under a historic and heavily traveled footbridge took out the bridge when the ties holding the canvas cover came loose, wrapped themselves around the bridge and proceeded to pull the structure down as the train passed. Zeal Steel was charged with re-building the footbridge.
Cecilia, upon meeting Lawrie and learning of his love of Art, asked him if he would consider collaborating with her. At first, he turned her down, but later, after visiting her gallery which was located very near the footbridge, he changed his mind. The two discussed Lawrie’s idea for his first sculpture which was inspired by the bridge project. Lawrie asked if Cecilia would put his first work in her gallery and her answer was definitively “No, but if you will make three sculptures, and help me fit out the gallery, we can do an entire exhibition on the Footbridge.” And that they did.
Lawrie had collected lots of railroad memorabilia which was strategically placed throughout the gallery and then Cecilia asked if he would get his crew to build a bridge down the center of the gallery. Craig, Lawrie’s business partner had taken scads of photos and videos throughout the bridge project, which were an asset to the exhibition. Cecilia met a French photographer who was vacationing in Dunedin and got her to capture the essence of the people traveling across the new bridge with six very well done photographs. The exhibition entitled, “The Footbridge: from Collapse to Return” was a great success and Lawrie was catapulted into the art world with the creation of these three very strong and moving sculptures pictured above. Lawrie has plans to visit Fe29 here in Wimberley sometime later this year. So, stay tuned, as there’s no telling what these two may get up to while he’s around!
