Earthcast concrete, 2010
Commissioned by Durham County Libraries
Stephen's Bent consists of a single, large, stacked form reminiscent of familiar indigenous log-built agricultural structures. The sculpture intentionally makes overt the connection to Stephen Lowe, the 18th Century original patriarch of the Lowe family for whom the area (Lowe's Grove) is named. The piece, with its stacked construction, references Stephen, a mason by trade, as well as his descendants who organized and built on the site the Lowe's Grove school in the late 19th century. The word "Bent" refers to tobacco barn parlance in which a bent is a "room", or subdivision, of a tobacco barn containing a certain number of tobacco "sticks" holding tobacco leaves for drying.
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