photo by: Mike Yoder

Lawrence sculptor Lori Norwood was recently honored with a national award for her metalwork sculpture "The Last Day of Summer," which was inspired by the annual Pooch Plunge at Lawrence's outdoor public pool. Norwood is pictured in her studio in November 2021 with her dogs, from left, Phoenix, Luna and Penny.

After winning the world championship in the pentathlon in 1989, Lori Norwood finally got the dog she had always wanted — and it was way more than she had hoped for.

That first dog, Sadie, an Australian shepherd, became “the love of my heart,” she said.

“When I retired from sport, I’d saved up some money, and she and I traveled through the Northwest up to Alaska, and we just drove in my truck and camped … and it was just a fabulous, fabulous time,” Norwood said. “I think my deep, abiding love for animals was cemented through the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of that first dog.”

Norwood has had dogs in her life ever since (currently Phoenix, Penny and Luna).

Like Sadie, they’ve provided constant companionship but also serious artistic inspiration for Norwood, a decorated athlete and well-known Lawrence sculptor who recently won a national competition for her piece “The Last Day of Summer.”

photo by: Aaron Paden

“The Last Day of Summer” by Lawrence artist Lori Norwood

The metal sculpture, which was named “Best Art & Design Project” in the 2021 Metal My Way contest, depicts a small group of frolicking dogs.

Norwood says the piece, along with others in a dog series, grew out of her experience attending Lawrence’s annual Pooch Plunge.

The plunge is the last day the public pool is open before it’s drained for the season, and it’s open only to dogs and their friends. Norwood, who lives across the street from the pool, attends this “happiest” dog day regularly.

“I watch and take pictures,” she said. “It’s such a joyful event.”

As an artist, she’s particularly taken with the “fluidity” of the dogs’ motion, their exuberance and their chaotic delight in having the run of the place.

The dynamism of “The Last Day of Summer” — the metal dogs are depicted midchase, one with tongue happily wagging, another with paws planted in a play stance — appeals to Trish Hilliard Emmons, the owner of the piece, who has it prominently displayed outside her house in Taos, New Mexico.

“We sit in the sunroom every morning and watch the sun hit it,” she said. “It’s absolutely incredible,” noting how the famed light of Taos plays upon its metallic surface and how the high-desert snow transforms the dogs’ summer frolic into a winter one.

photo by: Trish Hilliard Emmons

“The Last Day of Summer,” owned by Trish Hilliard Emmons, is displayed at her home in Taos, New Mexico.

Hilliard Emmons is a fellow dog lover and former Lawrence resident for whom the piece was specifically commissioned a few years ago as a gift.

Norwood tries to keep her work “50-50” between commissions and personal work, but the dogs obviously bridge both worlds. They also represent, like “The All-Around Athlete” sculpture she created for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, a side of her work that features “steel, linear, gestural pieces,” which she thinks of as “3D drawings,” as opposed to the highly figurative work she also does in cast bronze — pieces like her sculpture of Bishop Eugene J. Gerber at Newman University in Wichita or her bust of President Harry S. Truman, which she created for a Missouri Statehouse contest.

While winning contests — whether athletic or artistic — is gratifying, it’s evident that Norwood is in it for something more intangible.

“I’m trying very hard to share the beauty of movement, what I see in those dogs, in their play. I’m trying very hard to share that joy, that thing that I love seeing,” she said. “To the extent that people are able to find enjoyment in that also, that makes me happy.”

photo by: File

Lawrence artist Lori Norwood created “The All-Around Athlete” for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

photo by: Lori Norwood

A sculpture of Bishop Eugene J. Gerber at Newman University in Wichita by Lawrence sculptor Lori Norwood

photo by: Lori Norwood

A bust of President Truman by Lawrence sculptor Lori Norwood