Behind the Art: 'Dark Planet' graces SAMA-Ligonier Valley sculpture garden

Soon after the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art at Ligonier Valley launched its sculpture garden, a local philanthropist offered to add to the collection.

“Donald Green, a gentleman who was very philanthropic to the Ligonier Valley, reached out to SAMA to see if we would be interested in having another sculpture,” said site coordinator Kristin Miller. “We started talking about ideas. We wanted something very earthy and natural, something that fit our concept.”

Green knew just the thing.

“His family heritage is from England, and he still has family there,” Miller said. “He was very enthralled with this (English) artist, David Harber.”

Green contacted the artist, who sent over some sculpture designs, including “Dark Planet,” a massive orb made up of thousands of small, flat river stones.

“I fell in love with it. It was just stunning,” Miller said.

“Dark Planet” arrived in two pieces in 2019 and was installed on a circular concrete slab in front of the Ligonier Township facility. It stands about 4 feet tall and is lighted from the inside.

The Harber piece at SAMA is one in a series of “Dark Planet” sculptures, made either of irregularly shaped river stones or shards of slate, painstakingly placed to create a unified whole.

“I love to take rough ‘masculine’ elements and transform them into smooth sculptural surfaces,” Harber says on his website.

Based in Oxfordshire, England, Harber first became known for crafting sundials. His “Armilary Sphere” sundial is found in gardens around the world.

An armilary sphere is a model of objects in the sky, consisting of a spherical framework of rings centered on the Earth or sun. Harber’s sphere is take from a design by an ancestor, the famed Elizabethan mathematician John Blagrave.

His sculptures, sundials and water features are found in private properties and public spaces around the world, including hotels, corporate headquarters, shopping malls and airports.

To produce his designs, Harber heads a creative team including metalworkers, pattern makers, engravers, etchers, and waterworks and lighting technicians.

Harber is a two-time winner of the Queen’s Award for International Trade, the highest award for companies in the United Kingdom, recognizing excellence and quality in design and craftsmanship.

Green donated “Dark Planet” to the museum in memory of his parents, Isabella Larimer Wilkinson and William Rodham Green.

SAMA-Ligonier Valley’s Donald M. Robinson Sculpture Park was dedicated on Aug. 23, 2019, and also contains works by sculptor Jack Mayer of New Alexandria and the late Josefa Filkosky, a member of the Seton Hill University art faculty from 1959 until her death in 1999.