Artist creates sculptures honoring pioneering women

Sculptor Carolyn D. Palmer, an Orange County native who was born and raised in Chester, has won a national competition to create two permanent, larger-than-life sculptures honoring pioneering women in American medical history.

Palmer was selected to sculpt Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell – who became the first woman in the U.S. to earn a medical degree in 1849 – and Dr. Sarah Loguen Fraser, who became the first African American woman to graduate with a medical degree from SUNY in 1876. The sculptures were recently unveiled and now stand prominently in the entrance courtyard of SUNY Upstate Medical University.

National Women Physicians Day honors women physicians past and present and is celebrated each year on Feb. 3 as it is Dr. Blackwell’s birthday.

The project traces two defining breakthroughs in medicine: the admission of women into the profession and the long-delayed inclusion of Black women in medical education.

For the project, Blackwell and Loguen Fraser were interpreted by a contemporary sculptor who herself forged a career in the traditionally male-dominated field of monumental bronze sculpture. Palmer’s work creates a powerful throughline between past and present — between women who fought for entry into medicine and a woman artist making their legacy permanent in public space.

Palmer’s public sculptures have earned national and international attention, including major commissions including the Four Popes at the entrance to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in N.Y.C., the Lucille Ball replacement statue in Celoron, N.Y., a life-size Frank Sinatra statue in Hoboken, N.J., and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt busts at the FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, N.Y.

For more about Palmer, log onto https://shorturl.at/3ugHm.