Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
Tucked inside a stand of fir trees at Snowshoe Mountain Resort, at the head of a trail near Shavers Lake, is a breathtaking and thought-provoking sculpture titled “Heart of the Mountain.”
The sculpture was dedicated last Friday with the help of its creator, Jamie Lester, of Oceana, and members of the Snowshoe Sustainable Action Committee.
Snowshoe’s parent company, Alterra, commissioned the sculpture and Lester brought forth the company’s vision with his steel and fiberglass piece.
“Alterra wanted to do a piece about global warming and how it affects everybody, how it affects the Earth even more,” Lester said. “We just wanted to make a statement about that. It’s tough to do that in sculpture form, but what I came up with was a figurative solution with a personification of Mother Nature.”
The fiberglass element is a beautiful and strong female face – Mother Nature – and at the center is an anatomically correct heart being protected by spikes.
“She is the mountain and inside of the mountain is her heart, so she has armored her heart against forces that are coming in to take her heart away from the mountain,” Lester said. “That’s what the spikes represent.”
Lester explained that the piece was somewhat bittersweet because he was raised in coal country and his father was a coal miner, so he is a proud supporter of coal miners, but at the same time, he knows there needs to be a change in finding more sustainable resources for energy.
“My dad was a coal miner and so it’s kind of near to my heart,” he said. “It’s part of our heritage, but I have misgivings about it, too, because my dad died at age sixty from lung cancer. I’m a proud West Virginian, but I hope in the future in West Virginia we have new opportunities and new ways of creating energy.”
On the shoulders of Mother Nature are oil and gas drilling towers, representing other natural resources being taken out of the Earth.
“In the top of her hair, there are real saw blades that were welded into the piece,” he said. “These towers represent oil and gas drilling down into the mountain to try to suck that life out.”
As for his process, Lester explained that the face was sculpted in clay and molded with rubber molds. Fiberglass was laid into the molds to create the final piece. The rest of the sculpture is plasma cut steel, welded in place.
Lester was joined by his oldest daughter, Hannah, in working on the piece, which made it an even more special project to him.
“She was able to be my assistant on this which really meant a lot,” he said.
After Lester’s presentation, he was joined by members of the Snowshoe SAC team in the official ribbon cutting.
