Harvey Fite

Harvey Fite (December 25, 1903 – May 9, 1976) was a pioneering American sculptor, painter and earth artist best known for his monumental land sculpture Opus 40. A teacher, innovator and Woodstock artist of many talents, he was primarily a sculptor of wood and stone. Fite is also known for founding the Fine Arts Division at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Fite was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Christmas Day 1903, but his family relocated to Texas when he was three years old. In 1923 he entered law school, where he studied for three years before rejecting law and moving east to study for the ministry at St Stephen's College, a small Episcopal institution on New York's Hudson River. Once there, Fite was drawn to the stage at the campus theater, and at the end of his third year he dropped out to join a traveling troupe of actors. One day backstage, he picked up a seamstress's discarded spool and began to whittle. Finding his passion at last, he left the theater and set to sculpting.