Art in the Parks
Current Exhibits
Bronx
Anna Craycroft, Lo! The Fiery Whirlpool
October 17 to June 9, 2008
Baretto Point Park, Bronx
Image: Lo! The Fiery Whirlpool
Courtesy of artist
Description:
Anna Craycroft’s Lo! The Fiery Whirlpool is a study in contrasts. The thick base of the smaller-than-life-size corten steel lighthouse suggests permanency and a certain ruggedness that seems at odds with the filigree, almost lacy, cut-out at the apex of the structure. The form of the work suggests a lighthouse, a structure that is meant to be impervious to the weather. In contrast to this is the velvety, rusted texture of the steel, a literal testament to the structure’s vulnerability to water and air.
Craycroft’s work was previously shown at Socrates Sculpture Park as part of the Emerging Artists show in 2004, at P.S.1/MoMA, and at Governor's Island, among other locations.
Brooklyn
Tom Otterness, Large Covered Wagon
April 15, 2008 to January 4, 2009
Clumber Corner, Brooklyn
Image: Nelson Hancock Photography
Description:
A large, humorous bronze sculpture with historical references, Tom Otterness´s Large Covered Wagon depicts a smiling, pipe–puffing pioneer woman steering a covered wagon with the assistance of her yoked bull. Located at Clumber Corner at the entrance to DUMBO, Large Covered Wagon will be on view through January 2009. The installation was made possible by the Walentas Foundation LLC, Two Trees Management Co. and the DUMBO Improvement District.
Tom Otterness has exhibited widely and completed commissions in the U.S. and abroad. His stylized bronze figures combine into sculptural ensembles that explore the range of human experience, from grand ambition to common foibles, plucking imagery and themes from popular culture and subtly transforming them into humorous commentary.
Rebecca Pollock, Urban Ornament
October 8, 2007 to September 2008
JJ Byrne Park, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of the artist
Description:
The artist says: “Decoration is often inspired by nature. For those of us living in the city, however, nature can be hard to come by. We surround ourselves with abstractions of flowers on wallpaper and silhouettes of birds on tote bags, but we often ignore the elements native to our everyday environment. The city, li ke nature, is filled with ordered and jumbled, messy, and lovely things--all of which deserve notice.
The goal of this ongoing project is to showcase how the imperfect, charming objects found on the sidewalks of New York can be a source of inspiration every bit as compelling as traditional starting points. The images used for this installation are all derived from things found in and around Park Slope.”
Rebecca Pollock created a temporary mural entitled Become at Taffee Playground in 2006.
Funded by Forest City Ratner Companies
Jenny Holzer, Truisms Bench
October 22, 2007 to May 15, 2008
Columbus Park, Brooklyn
Image: Arielle Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Jenny Holzer’s Bench is part of the artist’s most famous series of work, her "truisms." These seemingly simple aphoristic phrases reveal themselves, upon closer inspection, to be slyly subversive. Holzer has used a variety of media, including LED signs, plaques, stickers, and T-shirts, to bring her words and ideas into the public sphere. A grouping of the artist’s benches was shown by the Public Art Fund in a 1989 installation in Central Park’s Doris Freedman Plaza.
Steve Tobin, Steelroots
October 15, 2007 to May 18, 2008
Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Image:
Photo by Ken Ek
Courtesy of Steve Tobin
Description:
Monumental sculptures of sinuous root forms are part of Tobin’s practice of exploring and recreating nature. Nature’s transient forms, like plant roots, are translated by the artist into the vernacular of bronze—making reference to classical sculpture and comparing nature’s forms with human-made beauty.
Tobin has worked in various media throughout his career, including glass, clay, bronze, and steel. His work often explores natural forms, and the artist cites nature as his earliest influence, one that continues to inform his work to date. The artist previously exhibited another of his works, Termite Mounds and Roots, at Theodore Roosevelt Park and Montefiore Park in 2001.
Manhattan
James Yamada, Our Starry Night
April 21 to November 29, 2008
Doris Freedman Plaza, Central Park, Manhattan
Image: James Yamada, Our Starry Night, 2008.
Photo by Seong Kwon, courtesy of Public Art Fund.
Description:
Built from powder-coated aluminum and punctuated with 1,900 colored LED lights, Our Starry Night is a 12-foot-tall sculpture that acts as an interactive passageway to Central Park. When visitors walk through the portal, they trigger a metal detector hidden inside the structure's casing that activates the LED lights on the exterior of the sculpture. The sculpture is only illuminated while the participant is standing within the passageway, and therefore he or she is not able to see the light patterns being created on the exterior surfaces. Instead, the lighting is visible to passersby on the street corner and in the park.
In this work, Yamada calls our attention to the expanding, yet increasingly subtle, presence of surveillance in the contemporary world. It also points towards such philosophical and political considerations as the loss of privacy in the name of greater safety and the use of personal information.
This is a project of the Public Art Fund.
Adam Peachy and James Evans, Mural
October 2007 to October 2008
Baruch Playground, Manhattan
Image: Mural in progress
Description:
At Baruch Playground in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, painters Adam Peachy and James Evans organized a team of volunteers to complete a mural of an underwater scene. It is a project of CITYarts.
CITYarts is a nonprofit organization that connects children and youth with professional artists to create public art that addresses civic and social issues, impacts their lives, and transforms their communities. Since its founding in 1968, CITYarts has engaged nearly 100,000 New Yorkers of all ages and backgrounds with over 500 professional artists in the process of designing and creating more than 260 murals, mosaics, and sculptures. Special emphasis is given to neighborhoods where access to and participation in the arts is limited.
Robert Indiana, Love Wall
October 1, 2007 to May 15, 2008
Park Avenue Mall at 57th Street, Manhattan
Image: Robert Indiana, Love Wall
Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery
Description:
Robert Indiana’s bronze Love Wall is a reworking of one of the artist’s most iconic images. The "Love" image, the word "love" in all capitals, arranged in a square with a tilted "O," was originally developed by the artist for use as the Museum of Modern Art’s Christmas card in 1964 and shown as a sculpture in Central Park in 1969. Since its inception, various sculptural incarnations of the sculpture have been installed on Sixth Avenue in New York City, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, in the city of Taipei, Taiwan, as well as in Singapore, Bilbao, Spain, and Vancouver, Canada. There is also another version of the sculpture, spelling out "ahava" (“love” in Hebrew) on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Ahava was shown in Central Park’s Doris Freedman Plaza for a four-month period in 1978, prior to its installation at the Israel Museum.
Tony Smith, Free Ride (1962, refabricated 1982)
October 31, 2007 to May 30, 2008
Carl Schurz Park, Manhattan
Image: Arielle Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Tony Smith’s (1912-1980) painted steel sculpture Free Ride is a study in planes and angles. The geometric work, in some ways a simple black structure, becomes complex through its range of views. Each vantage the sculpture is viewed from offers a different angle and a different shape to the form. Smith’s work is not a sculpture for passive viewing; instead it invites engagement and thought—provoking a response in the viewer.
Tony Smith was trained and spent a good portion of his life as an architect. His introduction to art was through painting, and he did not begin his career as a sculptor until he was 44, in 1956. Smith was highly influenced by other minimalist, monumental sculptors, such as Barnett Newman, and first exhibited his sculptural work in 1964. He was the first artist to exhibit work in New York City Parks with his 1967 show in Bryant Park.
On loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York.