Abraham Lincoln Sculpture: Created by Avard T. Fairbanks

Avard T. Fairbanks created nearly 100 public monuments and many other fine masterpieces of art during his career as a professional sculptor spanning more than 75 years. Among these, a significant number were of Abraham Lincoln for locations throughout the United States. Eugene F. Fairbanks, the second son of Maude and Avard T. Fairbanks, was born in 1921 in Eugene, Oregon, while sculptor Fairbanks was teaching art at the University of Oregon. Eugene chose to study medicine. With Dr. Charles J. Flora, he co-authored a marine biology species identification handbook in 1966 and 1977, The Sound And The Sea. His first book about Avard Fairbanks' sculpture, A Sculptor's Testimony In Bronze And Stone (1972 and 1994), featured sacred sculpture. In 1995 he was asked to create a monument honoring fishermen of Bellingham lost at sea. During spare moments in the practice of medicine, Eugene composed poetry to complement his father's fantasy sculpture. He has collected photographs and made many enlargements of Fairbanks' sculpture for this and other projected publications. In 2001 he published A Sculpture Garden of Fantasy, featuring the fantasy sculpture of Avard Fairbanks. His other books include Human Proportions for Artists and Children's Proportions for Artists. Creating a Portrait in Sculpture is an illustrated book on Avard Fairbanks' technique of modeling portraits.