Joan Ophelia Gordon Bell (1915–1975) was an English sculptor, known for her several commissions for the United Kingdom's Atomic Energy Authority.[1]
She was born in London on 1 July 1915,[citation needed] the daughter of the painter Winifred Gordon Bell,[1][2] (née Billinge; full name Winifred Joan Ophelia Gordon Bell[3]) and Frederick Lawrence Bell,[3] and was raised in the St John's Wood area.[4] In 1938, her address was listed as 13 Greville Place, London NW6.[5]
She married the landscape artist William Heaton Cooper (1903–1995) in 1940.[1] They lived in Grasmere in the English Lake District, and had two daughters and two sons,[1][6] one of them being the painter Julian Cooper.[7] Both Bell and her husband were followers of the teachings of the Christian Moral Re-Armament movement.[6] The couple held a joint exhibition at the Fine Art Society's London gallery in 1955.[1] Her auction record is £120, set at Anderson & Garland's auction house in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 14 July 2015, for her a composition sculpture of a mountaineer.[8]
Bell died in Grasmere in 1975 and is buried in the village cemetery.[1]
Works
[edit]Relief carving of an anhydrite kiln, made from a piece of anhydrite
Her giant Portland stone figures, 'Thought' and 'Action', are outside the former Atomic Energy Authority offices in Risley, Lancashire.[7]
The Challenge is in the foyer of Stubbins Primary School, in Ramsbottom.[11]
The Breakthrough Cross (1966), on the roof of the Lady Chapel at the Church of Christ the Healer at Burrswood HospitalinTunbridge Wells, is made from aluminium and scrap metal.[12]
Other works are displayed at the Heaton Cooper Studio in Grasmere,[1] which William Heaton Cooper had inherited from his father, the landscape artist Alfred Heaton Cooper.[13] Formerly at Ambleside, William moved the gallery to Grasmere in 1938. It is now operated by John Cooper, another of Ophelia and William's sons.[13] An exhibition of her work, "A Vital Spirit", is being held at the studio, from May–October 2015.[4][14]
The Lakes Artists Society, of which Bell was a member from 1940 until her death,[15] grants an annual 'Ophelia Gordon Bell Award' for sculpture "to encourage and reward excellence and innovation".[16]
