Bernard Langlais

Born in Old Town, Maine, Langlais studied painting at the Corcoran School of Art, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Brooklyn Museum School, and received a Fulbright Scholarship to Oslo, Norway. While living in New York City in the 1950s and early 1960s, Langlais experimented with the medium of wood. He had a solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1961 but moved back to Maine in 1966. There, he built a sculpture park around his home, adopting a daily art-making practice in the spirit of a farmer or homesteader. He treated his installations like components of a living, dynamic environment, moving works around, weathering them on barn roofs, and relishing how the elements—and the flora and fauna—affected them through the seasons.