SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY.- Sculptor and Skidmore College alumnus Fitzhugh Karol unveiled a permanent large-scale sculpture on Skidmore College's campus on Monday, May 12, marking a meaningful full-circle moment in his career. The sculpture, installed just outside the College’s Saisselin Art Building, is an offering to the institution that helped shape him — an invitation to gather, reflect, and connect with form and meaning in daily life.

Karol, known for his meditative, material-forward practice, works across a wide range of mediums including steel, ceramics, and wood. This new installation is an evolution of his work “Tingwon,” which was previously exhibited at Sculpture by the Sea on Bondi and Cottesloe Beaches, one of Australia’s most attended sculptural events. The piece has been reimagined and adapted specifically for its new home at Skidmore, where Karol first began his formal educational and artistic journey.

“Having an artwork come to campus feels full circle indeed — it’s very exciting for me. I love that students will sit on and around the work. They’ll have it in their everyday background and be in conversation with it. My process is about play, immersing myself and transporting myself within the landscape of work. Large-scale sculpture allows the viewer to take part in that as well.”

A protégé of the revered ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu, Karol credits his apprenticeship with her as formative. “Toshiko taught me that daily life is a practice — making, cooking, cleaning, gardening, interacting — it all feeds the work. Her philosophies and dedication to her practice and pursuits remain one of the strongest guiding forces in everything I do,” he says.

Takaezu’s connection to Skidmore spanned decades, beginning with her role as a visiting artist in the Summer Six art program in the 1970s. With the help of students and alumni, she created monumental sculptures and later returned to campus to complete some of the largest works of her career using the College’s oversized kilns.

Karol’s work is characterized by bold silhouettes drawn from landscapes, simple planes interrupted by voids or circles, and a balance of masculine weight with feminine grace. He begins many sculptures with paper and cardboard, translating that delicacy into steel — imbuing his monumental works with an artisanal and attentive spirit.

His installations — seen in public spaces from Prospect Park to the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge — often encourage interaction and community. At Skidmore, his sculpture Recess: Reads invited such engagement on the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery grounds from 2022 to 2024. He hopes the new work becomes a part of both the physical and metaphysical landscape of student experience, much like the Mark di Suvero sculpture he played on as a child at Dartmouth College. Karol reflects, “That experience shaped me as a young kid. This is my hope for the students here — that this work becomes theirs, a backdrop to the memories that will play in their minds forever.”

Fitzhugh Karol (b. 1982, New Hampshire) is a sculptor best known for his large-scale sculpture in wood and steel, as well as ceramics. His forms are based on the silhouettes of actual and imagined landscapes, using slopes, steps, and portals to create playful new landscapes with stories embedded within them.

Karol is a 2004 graduate of Skidmore College, received his Master of Fine Arts from The Rhode Island School of Design and was apprentice to ceramic artist Toshiko Takaezu. Karol has exhibited nationally and internationally including at The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, the LongHouse Reserve, New York City’s Prospect Park and Tappen Park, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Bartow-Pell Museum, and Sculpture by the Sea Australia. He was a winner of the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge Public Art Program as well as the Uniqlo NYC Parks Expressions Grant, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Process Space Residency, the Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship Residency, and the Socrates Sculpture Park’s Emerging Artist Fellowship. His work is included in the private collections in Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, South Carolina and Virginia.

Karol lives in New York with his wife Lyndsay and their two children.