Death of artist William Salisbury leaves creative void in north country art community

Aug. 11—CLAYTON — William L. Salisbury, 72, who created legendary metal creations that are dotted around the north country and who also forged a reputation with his warmth, wit, conversation and his own personal mettle, died Tuesday morning a few days after entering Hospice care.

"The north country art world has lost an invaluable contributor and resource," said Marina S. Loew, curator at Thousand Islands Arts Center, Clayton, where in 2020, its gallery hosted, "Will Salisbury, Sculptor, a Retrospective."

Evelyn Saphier, director and founder of the Iva Smith Memorial Gallery of Fine Art in Hammond and who worked with Mr. Salisbury on two projects in the past two years, said that in addition to being a great artist, he was a "great soul."

A 9 1/2 -foot-tall steel sculpture by Mr. Salisbury, "Angelic Form," was dedicated July 1, 2021 at Ms. Saphier's gallery. It presides over a five-circuit labyrinth where, Ms. Saphier said, people are invited to "walk in peace" or "search for peace."

"He was a man who lived his compassionate artistic vision, expressing it both in his artwork and in his life, creating works of social commentary and beauty, mentoring fellow artists, training young men in the art of metalwork and preserving the legacy of north country artists over time in his website," she said.

Mr. Salisbury may be best known for his giant installation, "Three Crows," located on his property and behind his workshop in the hamlet of Omar, town of Alexandria, on the west side of southbound Interstate 81 in the town of Alexandria. The crows, crafted from oil storage tanks, were installed in 1999, before the millennium, as harbingers of change. Twenty years later, home owners on Comfort Island commissioned Mr. Salisbury to create three crows for their estate in Maryland. Those home owners also installed another sculpture by Mr. Salisbury, a bear/weather vane measuring 7 feet tall and weighing 700 pounds atop their Comfort Island home, which faces Boldt Castle.

Other popular public creations include "Breaching Muskie Monument" at Clayton's Frink Park; the "Tree of Knowledge" outside Hawn Memorial Library and a welded aluminum sculpture of a flying swan hauling a Shasta trailer in front of Swan Bay resort on State Route 12.

In 2017 at the Snowtown Film Festival, Mr. Salisbury presented actor and Watertown High School and St. Lawrence University graduate Viggo Mortensen with a sculpture — the North Country Inspiration to Artists Award — of a crow named Rascal.

Mr. Salisbury's creations have also been in several galleries in New York City, including galleries in SoHo. His commissions for sculpted items have included gargoyles, a giant sturgeon, angels, lighthouses, signs, furniture, railings, Japanese screens, trees, fish and birds.

But those who knew him say there was much more to the artist than reflected in those public creations. Mr. Salisbury was a self-described "social commentary" artist. Before his "Tree of Knowledge" was unveiled in 2013, he told the Times it was a rare public sculpture. "It's not usually my thing that I'm out in a public group of people with a speech or something," he said.

"His art is not always appreciated. It's not living room art," said Charlie Tebbutt, an Oregon-based environmental lawyer who has spent summers for his entire life in the Thousand Islands and who became a fellow river rat with Mr. Salisbury. He was age 16, 47 years ago, when he first got to know the artist, who he said had a way of documenting the ills of society.

"His personal art, not his commissions — which are beautiful onto themselves — that art that came from his heart, was that type of art," Mr. Tebbutt said. "What we see, the muskies, the Tree of Knowledge, the bear on Comfort Island, the Swan Bay trailer and so many others are his versions of the easy stuff in life. But the hard stuff was where he shined most: the atrocities of war, the atrocities of famine, governments turning the backs on people."

Mr. Tebbutt lives in a home on Woronoco Island which Mr. Salisbury built in the mid-1990s. It's topped by a gargoyle. "The guy was a modern-day da Vinci," Mr. Tebbutt said. "He worked in every medium. He could engineer anything."

He added, "Will would give somebody a job who was down and out. I was one of those young people. He took lots of young people under his wings, gave them jobs, taught them how to work, live and how to respect the river and how to respect humankind. He instilled in us a work ethic and a party ethic."

Mr. Tebbutt is one of the essayists in the book, "Will Salisbury: Sculptor," by Richard Margolis, a Rochester photographer and summer resident of Thousand Island Park. The 119-page book includes 165 photographs and 14 essays about Mr. Salisbury and his work. It accompanied the retrospective exhibition at the TIAC.

Mr. Salisbury had much respect for the north country artistic community. He created and maintained the website, North Country Artists. The site has been updated to say, "It will remain, dedicated in his memory, as a directory and tribute to the amazing talent of the region."

Story-teller, teacher

Brandon J. Lawwill, a 2006 graduate of Alexandria Central School and who graduated with an art degree from SUNY Potsdam, said that when growing up, he would often drive by Mr. Salisbury's Omar studio/barn.

"I often said to my fiance, 'I wonder if he'd just let me hang out?' I don't even cares if he pays me," Mr. Lawwill said.

About two years ago, he got the chance when he noticed that Mr. Salisbury was advertising for an assistant.

"I didn't waste a minute," Mr. Lawwill said. "I contacted him immediately and he wanted me to come down then. We hit it right off. The interview we had was supposed to be a few minutes, but we spent hours in his ceramic studio talking about everything, telling stories. His stories were so mesmerizing — almost movie-like."

Mr. Lawwill began working with Mr. Salisbury is early 2021, becoming a key assistant for the "Angelic Form" sculpture at Ms. Saphier's Hammond gallery.

"He and I did basically 90 percent of the angel," Mr. Lawwill said. "It was my crowning jewel to work with him."

There were times in the project when Mr. Salisbury was sidelined by illness.

"There was a period when he was in his hospital bed," Mr. Lawwill said. "He was calling me, sending me messages and I'm sending him pictures and he was still giving me full, detailed instructions from his bed, yelling at the nurses, saying he needed to make phone calls to me."

Mr. Lawwill also gave tours of Mr. Salisbury's Omar studio, something that the artist himself enjoyed doing. "He didn't care if you were young, old, could barely see, he would lay it out for you and tell you about all the pieces in his studio. I explained his legacy a little bit, from what I knew."

Mr. Salisbury was born in Syracuse, the son of an experimental ceramist for Syracuse China. He started work as a sculptor in 1964 by carving images of Ethiopian famine refugees in his family's cellar using plaster pillars. Reading about the refugees in National Geographic and Time magazines shocked and inspired him. A series on Haitian boat people soon followed.

He didn't attend college and almost didn't finish secondary school. "I went to the school of life," he told the Watertown Daily Times in 2019.

That life experience included heading to California as a teenager and turning 18 there and taking part in the "Summer of Love" in 1967.

Mr. Salisbury eventually returned home to Syracuse and told his father he wanted to finish high school, if only to prove he could do it. His father eventually sent him to the Outward Bound School at Hurricane Island off the coast of Maine. He was then sent to Webster Academy in Webster, Mass.

Mr. Tebbutt said that Mr. Salisbury's worldly experiences also included visiting Florence, Italy, camped out at the sculpture gardens of the masters. "He literally slept at their feet to learn what they did," he said.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT

Leslie W. Rowland, executive director of the TIAC, said the organization treasures the memory of hosting Mr. Salisbury's exhibition during the first summer of the COVID pandemic in 2020, with one attraction especially standing out.

"It was a monumental task to move 'The Moon Walkers" to our campus on John Street," Ms. Rowland said. "But because Will had so many very close friends and supporters, the oversized 'walkers' arrived on time and were placed without issue."

In "The Moon Walkers," five metal human forms, a bit larger than life, appear to be lost and struggling to survive. A man embraces a woman. Behind that couple are two children. Behind them is an older woman on her knees, a hand reaching out, apparently seeking assistance. All are without clothing. Fine details such as veins and nails in hands and feet reflect the artist's skill.

"For me, it's about the tragedy of the human race," Mr. Salisbury told the Times in 2019. "We're in bad shape and we're not going to survive this crap the way we're doing it."

"Despite the pandemic, hundreds of visitors had the privilege of seeing a lot of Will's best work displayed here," Ms. Rowland said. "An artist and human being like Will doesn't come along often."

Ms. Saphier, at the Iva Smith Memorial Gallery of Fine Art in Hammond, said the death of Mr. Salisbury has left "an enormous vacuum in the hearts of his friends and family and the art community of the north country."

"We're fortunate that his artistic soul and vision, as evidenced by his many beautiful works scattered among us, remains," Ms. Saphier said.

Among them is the "Angelic Form" at her gallery's labyrinth. It's in the form of an angel, but Mr. Salisbury, when it was unveiled, told the Times that it has different meaning for different people. He said that in addition to an angel, people may see different themes in the sculpture, ranging from a space alien to Christ on the cross.

"It's a lot of things to a lot of people," Mr. Salisbury said.

But earlier this week, the sculpture had special meaning for Ms. Saphier — if only for a fleeting, treasured moment.

"Strangely, right after receiving the message that Will had died, I looked up toward the angel and saw a bird perched on the tip of its upper right wing."