Spy Profile: Ken Herlihy and His Sculpture

Ken Herlihy

As part of our occasional series on Eastern Shore residents who have thriving second careers after retirement, the Spy recently visited sculptor Ken Herlihy at his studio in Georgetown. If you have explored Chestertown, Sudlersville, or Rock Hall, you may already have seen some of Ken’s work.

Since 1992, Ken’s bronze likeness of Chestertown native and major league baseball star Bill “Swish” Nicholson has occupied a small space next to the Chamber of Commerce Building. Another baseball great, Jimmy Foxx, is immortalized in bronze on the corner of Church and Main Streets in Sudlersville. The 16-foot-high bronze Waterman’s Statue that graces Rock Hall Harbor was Ken’s gift to Kent County in 1995. Dedicated to the Bay’s watermen, Ken’s model for the sculpture was Captain Stanley Vansant, who devoted his life to following the water and building thousands of workboats in Kent County.

As Ken approaches his 83rd birthday in January, he seems to be more prolific than ever. A lifelong rugby enthusiast, he is currently working on a large sculpture of a rugby scrum. He says, “There are 16 asses, 36 elbows, 180 fingers, but no necks.” He hopes to sell it, but selling his work has never been his first consideration. He has never exhibited in galleries, but he likes commissions. One of his commissioned works, “A Father’s Legacy,” took a year to complete. Located in a pond in Cape Charles, Virginia, this bronze sculpture depicts a full-sized boat, a dog, and crabbers.

Before his retirement from the world of finance when he was 59 years old, art was an avocation for Ken. He grew up in Auburndale, Massachusetts, and studied economics at Harvard. After graduation, he worked for Citibank in the Far East for four years. He then returned to Harvard for an M.B.A. and worked for the State Department in their foreign aid operations. Then he worked briefly for a manufacturing company, followed by several years in Philadelphia as an investment analyst for Provident Bank. For the last 20 years of his finance career, Ken managed two mutual funds for Delaware Management Company.

After managing other people’s money by day, Ken took art classes at night at the Fleisher Art Institute in Philadelphia. He studied drawing, painting, and graphic arts, but found himself in a sculpture class when the two-dimensional art classes were filled. At the end of the evening, “when the clay piece of the naked lady actually looked like the model,” he was hooked on sculpture.

By the time he retired from finance and enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in 1988, Ken had been sculpting for 12 years. In addition to his studies at PAFA, he spent months in Carrara, Italy, learning to sculpt marble using both hand and pneumatic tools.

About twenty-five years ago, Ken and his wife, Pat, who is an award-winning painter, were looking for a weekend escape. They needed a fairly isolated place so that Ken could use very noisy tools without disturbing any neighbors. They found property with two empty log cabins on a bluff along the Sassafras River. With the help of Chestertown architect Marsha Fritz, the Herlihys joined the log cabins and crafted a comfortable home where they can display their eclectic art collection. Eight years ago, Ken and Pat sold their Pennsylvania house and made Kent County their full-time residence.

“I get my inspiration from everywhere, including fashion magazines, photographs, travels, and the works of other artists,” Ken says. The diversity of his media and his subject matter reflects the liveliness and curiosity of this artist, who continues to play touch football and golf every Thanksgiving with an old friend, as well as Bocci in warm weather.