Sculpture “Eroica”
The 12’ tall copper sculpture “Eroica” was designed in 1974 by Mr. Jack Cartlidge. Eight of his sculptures are displayed around Sarasota (see biography below). According to Jack’s family he loved this particular piece, and it is one of his most abstract. Below is a description of the statue, in Jack’s own words:
“‘Eroica,’ a large abstract piece on the South Trail and Bahia Vista, was an attempt to translate Beethoven’s third symphony (The Eroica) written in admiration for Napoleon’s heroic battles to bring freedom to France. Thus the title – Eroica, meaning heroic. But, when Beethoven discovered how badly Napoleon was carrying out his mission, he de-dedicated it, but the original title stuck. So, the attempt in this piece was to have the different forms pick up on the different movements used in this symphony. From piccolos to bass drums, from crescendo to diminuendo, the variety of forms covers them all.”
Jack Cartlidge Brief Biography
by Dory Lock
Revised October 2008
Jack Cartlidge (b. 1924-2006) was an educator and a sculptor best known for his monumental sculptures that can be found in a variety of public settings throughout Sarasota. (see list below)
Artwork in Sarasota:
- “Job” is at Temple Emmanuel on McIntosh Road;
- “Monolith” is in a small park in Sapphire Shores on Bayshore Road, just south of the Ringling Museum;
- “Titans I” is on the Sarasota bay front across from Selby Gardens;
- “Band of Angels” is on the New College of Florida campus;
- “American Allegory” is next to the Sarasota County Administration Building on Ringling Boulevard, and
- “Nobody’s Listening,” “Earth Mother,” “Guardian” and “Pioneer Family” are at Sarasota’s City Hall.
- “Sentinel I” is at the Kay Glasser Wing of the Betty & Alex Schoenbaum Human Services Center of Sarasota on 17th Street.
- The piece,“Eroica,” which sits at the BB&T Bank on the corner of Bahia Vista and the Tamiami Trail, is one of his most abstract.
Cartlidge first came to Sarasota as a teenager when his family moved here from Oklahoma in 1940. Active in local theater productions and on the Sarasota High School newspaper, he served as a radio announcer for WSPB before volunteering for the U.S. Army in 1942. Cartlidge was trained as a radio engineer in the Army Air Corps, but it was while he was stationed in Hawaii that he took a painting class and began considering art as a career. After the war, he enrolled in art classes taught by Hilton Leech at Ringling School (now Ringling College of Art and Design) and then attended the University of Tampa on the G.I. bill, where he received a bachelor’s degree in art and literature. Later, Cartlidge married Erlaine Gonzalez and went on to the University of Alabama to earn his master’s degree in art.
After college, Cartlidge and his wife settled back in Sarasota. They purchased an acre of pasture land where they built a small cottage he used to call “the little house” (which also doubled as a studio.) For eight years during the 1950s the couple worked together as paper carriers for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. This job allowed Cartlidge to have his days free to devote to his artwork. Originally a painter, he began at this point to branch out into new media – copper enamel jewelry and outdoor sculpture that involved a metal armature, cement and stained glass, as well as translucent mosaic tile. He and Erlaine were also active with the Sarasota Art Association (now the Sarasota Visual Arts Center), organizing juried exhibitions and themed art shows. During the ’50s and ’60s, the two worked alongside or became friends with Syd Solomon, Frank Rampola, Ben Stahl, George Prout, Eric Von Schmidt, Craig Roubadoux, Frank Colson, Julio de Diego and many other artists, educators and writers.
After leaving the newspaper in 1960, several commissions for artwork grew into a full-fledged business: Cartlidge Architectural Art, Inc. Architectural firms throughout Florida (Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Orlando and Jacksonville) commissioned Cartlidge to design and execute large works including stained glass windows for numerous churches, pre-cast concrete bas-reliefs for hotel lobbies and outdoor original sculpture for office and medical buildings.
Over time, Cartlidge added rooms to the original “little house” and eventually built a large second building that was, again, part house and part studio. When large commissions came in, he utilized every inch of the house and studio and hired friends and family in order to produce what were sometimes thousands of square feet of stained glass or translucent mosaic windows.
In the early sixties, Cartlidge also began to teach sculpture part-time at New College. He joined the faculty full time in 1968 where he taught sculpture for the next 30 years. He retired in 1998.
In 1965 Cartlidge began to develop his copper repousse’ technique, using a metal armature covered in beaten and welded copper. The result is a relatively lightweight and durable piece of sculpture which resembles bronze. His first public piece in this medium was commissioned by architect Jack West for the Sarasota City Hall in 1967. That piece, “Nobody’s Listening,” took Cartlidge three years to complete and was based on the artist’s reaction to the Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement. He felt that it was important that our civic leaders never forget what it’s like to be invisible; he believed in a “voice for all.”
After “Nobody’s Listening,” his technique continued to evolve and he sought to master the material so that he could articulate ever more subtle forms and gestures in the large abstracted figures. Inspired by the “battle of the titans” in Milton’s Paradise Lost and the never-ending struggle between good and evil, Cartlidge created his largest copper pieces in the 1970s and 1980s: Titans I (8 ft. by 9 ft.), Titans II (11 ft. by 11 ft.) and Titans III (14 ft. x 11 ft.). In addition to the 12 public monumental pieces, there are other large works in the artist’s estate.
For each of the monumental pieces, Cartlidge created models, or what he called them: “macquettes,” that he would finish with different “patinas” or colors. These smaller pieces allowed Cartlidge to work out many of the details of the piece before he launched into realizing it in full scale. The estate has released ten of these pieces (in addition to other of the artist’s works) for sale through the Dabbert Gallery.
