GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL

Bird Girl

Telfair Museum 

Savannah, GA

This statue was created by Sylvia Shaw Judson,the sculptor who sculpted the statue of Mary Dyer which appeared in an earlier post. For years the statue was in the Bonaventure Cemetery in Savanna Georgia. It was moved to a safer place after it gained fame through the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil which was set in Savanna.

Cover Photo for novel Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil

"For Jack Leigh, his iconic moment came in 1994 when he was commissioned by Random House for the cover of John Berendt’s non-fiction novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The book was about the repercussions that the murder of a local male prostitute and its subsequent trial that ensued. The titular “the garden of good and evil,” referred to Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. Bredent suggested to Leigh to go to the cemetery for a suitable subject." 

This post would not appear on this blog were it not that Sylvia Shaw Judson became a convinced Quaker in midlife. She was instrumental in beginning the Lake Forest Meeting

In a simple book of pictures and quotations Judson showed how art could evoke a state of mind which encouraged spiritual values. On the website of the Telfair Museum we read:

"In The Quiet Eye: A Way of Looking at Pictures (1982), Judson emphatically connected her Quaker beliefs to her aesthetic practices. She emphasized the term 'divine ordinariness,' which she defined as the 'delicate balance between the outward and the inward, with freshness and a serene wholeness and respect for all simple first-rate things, which are for all times and all people.'

These principles of simplicity, equality, and inwardness may very well have been applied to the work that we have now come to know as the Bird Girl. The young figure, plainly dressed, holds two bowls in either hand, which could be interpreted as a gesture of weighing and balancing. The overall simplicity of the composition, or its 'divine ordinariness,' helps explain its enduring charm; the sculpture reveals very little even after prolonged looking and retains an air of compelling mystery. Originally unassumingly titled 'Fountain Figure' (1936), the sculpture stood anonymously in Bonaventure Cemetery until it was featured on the cover of John Berendt’s bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994) and the subsequent Clint Eastwood film (1997)."

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The image of the innocent child with arms outstretched, holding two vessels speaks of the choices we are constantly called to make. In the novel that became associated with the picture of the statue, the choice was presented as between good and evil. More often the choice is between self and others, or between following guidance or following the trend, or between truth and falsehood, or between any two things which lead us in opposite directions. The point is that we must choose; indecision is a choice also.   

Picture and words from The Quiet Eye: A Way of Looking at Pictures

by Sylvia Shaw Judson 

Yale University Art Gallery

Grave of William Penn

Edward Hicks

1847

"all in order sweet & lovely"

 William Blake