Jean Woodham Collection

Collection

Identifier: OPL010

Scope and Contents

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The Jean Woodham Collection consists of biographical and career documentation, photographs, and correspondence relating to the sculptor Jean Woodham. The materials document Woodham's career as a pioneer of welded metal sculpture and her connection to Opelika, where her sculpture Whirlwind is installed at the public library.

Biographical and career materials include an artist biography sheet issued by the Silvermine Guild of Artists, where Woodham served as head of the sculpture program, a curriculum vitae listing her exhibitions, collections, commissions, awards, and documentary films, and a 1998 New York Times review by William Zimmer of her fifty-year retrospective at the Stamford Museum. The photographs include a view of Woodham's Westport, Connecticut studio during the fabrication of Scholars' Sphere and a photograph of the sculpture Spinoff. The correspondence consists of a single letter, dated October 7, 1977, from Woodham to the Azalea Garden Club of Opelika, written on the occasion of the dedication of Whirlwind.

The collection is an assembled collection, developed by the Opelika Public Library, and additions are expected as the library continues to document Woodham and her work.

Dates

Creation: 2026

Biographical / Historical

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Jean Woodham was born on August 16, 1925, in Midland City, Alabama, and grew up in the southeast Alabama town of Geneva. She earned a bachelor's degree in applied art from Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now Auburn University, in 1946, and moved to New York City that same year. There she studied at the Clay Club Sculpture Center and was among the first students to take up welding as a fine-art technique, a method that would define her work.

In 1955 Woodham settled in Connecticut, where she became head of the sculpture program at the Silvermine Guild of Artists. From the late 1960s she built a national practice in large-scale commissioned public sculpture, completing more than 150 works for corporate, civic, and educational clients, among them the New York City Board of Education, General Electric, and the World Bank. She served as president of the Sculptors Guild from 1990 to 1993.

Woodham maintained ties to Alabama throughout her career. Several of her sculptures are installed in the state, including Monody at Auburn University and Spinoff at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. Her sculpture Whirlwind, commissioned by the Azalea Garden Club of Opelika, was installed at the Opelika Public Library in the 1970s. Jean Woodham died in Westport, Connecticut, on October 28, 2021.

Full Extent

254 Megabytes

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Biographical and career materials, photographs, and correspondence documenting the Alabama-born sculptor Jean Woodham (1925-2021), a pioneer of welded metal sculpture whose work Whirlwind is installed at the Opelika Public Library. The collection includes a Silvermine Guild artist biography, a curriculum vitae, a 1998 New York Times review, photographs of Woodham's studio and of the sculpture Spinoff, and a 1977 letter from Woodham to the Azalea Garden Club of Opelika.