Art in the Parks
Past Exhibits (2007)
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.
George Sánchez-Calderón, Plinth, Monument, Stoop
October 1 to December 15, 2007
Joyce Kilmer Park, Bronx
Image: George Sánchez-Calderón, Plinth, Monument, Stoop
Courtesy of George Sánchez-Calderón and ZieherSmith Gallery, New York
Description:
Plinth/Monument/Stoop literally describes the plywood structure that Sánchez-Calderón built to resemble a plinth for a classical monument on one side and a stepped entry on the other. He originally placed the piece in the Overtown, an economically challenged section of Miami, Florida. For two months, it remained outdoors for locals to use to their liking – activities that never resulted in its destruction. Sánchez-Calderón visited with his camera, asking those at the scene if they would like to be photographed. Explaining the plinth’s traditional purpose as a pedestal for a work of art instantly inspired participants to respond. Standing on the plinth, some choose to present poses in classical contrapposto or defiant gestures of power. Others lounged on the steps, transforming it into a symbolic stoop, a traditional social center for many of America’s urban centers.
Locating the work in a New York City park seemed appropriate to the artist, since parks are traditional locations for the type of monumental sculpture to which the plinth alludes, while the piece’s “stoop” side is homage to the entrances of New York City brownstones.
Sánchez-Calderón was born in New York City in 1967, the son of Cuban exiles. His family relocated to Miami, where he now lives and works. He received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and BFA from Florida International University. His work is in the permanent collection of the Miami Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, the Margulies Collection, the Craig Robbins Collection, and the Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz collection. He has received the Oscar B. Cintas Fellowship, the South Florida Cultural Consortium Award, and is a finalist for the 2007-08 Rome Prize.
This project was organized by ZieherSmith Gallery, New York. It is funded in part by private support from the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City.
Michael Milton, Bronx Boogie
October 1 to December 10, 2007
Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx
Image: Malcolm Pickney, Parks & Recreation
Courtesy of the artist
Description:
The sinuous, twisting form of Michael Milton’s foam-wrapped metal sculpture Bronx Boogie evokes both abstract art and the natural world. The project is the artist’s first public art installation.
Simon Leung, Allison Smith & Amy Yoes, Poe and Twain Projects
September 8 to December 2, 2007
Glyndor Gallery, Wave Hill, Bronx
Image: Courtesy of Wave Hill
Description:
Jennifer McGregor, Senior Curator at Wave Hill, invited three artists to develop projects based on the writing of Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe. Alison Smith has taken Twain’s description of his experiences as a confederate soldier as inspiration for her installation of a period room. Simon Leung uses several of Poe’s works to inform his video project, which explores site-specificity, contemporary politics, language, and allegory. Amy Yoes’s installation also explores text from Poe through her sculptural work, a complex interlocking structure that is part furniture and part architecture.
Brooklyn
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
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.
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.
Arthur Simms, Real Estate for Birds?
October 6, 2007 to March 17, 2008
Prospect Park (Grand Army Plaza entrance), Brooklyn
Image: Photo by A. Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Arthur Simms takes mundane artifacts of daily life and industrial waste and turns them into creative objects loaded with cultural memories and spiritual references. Like many of his works, Real Estate for Birds? is made from found materials: a telephone pole, rope, wood, wire, bird houses, glue, skateboards, bamboo, screws, nails, and bottle caps. Simms’s work frequently examines the cross-cultural dialogue between his native Jamaica and the United States. He lives and works in Queens, where he collects the various cast-off objects—bottles, rocks, wire, and scrap metal—that he incorporates into his work.
Simms was born in 1961 in Saint Andrews, Jamaica. He holds an MFA and BFA from Brooklyn College and also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His sculpture has been exhibited widely, including group shows at the Queens Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and P.S.1/MoMA. He is a recipient of the 2002-2003 Rome Prize, a 1999 Guggenheim fellowship, and was featured in the prestigious 2001 Venice Biennale, representing Jamaica. Just a short walk from Prospect Park, a new work by Simms is included in the exhibition Infinite Islands: Contemporary Caribbean Art at the Brooklyn Museum until January 27, 2008.
This project was presented in cooperation with the Prospect Park Alliance and made possible with funding by Forest City Ratner Companies and in-kind assistance from Con Edison.
Anne Peabody, Fallen Nest
October 1 to January 11, 2008
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of artist
Description:
New Yorkers are incredibly resourceful when it comes to carving out niches for dwelling, says artist Anne Peabody. Fallen Nest was inspired by the current proliferation of new housing in Brooklyn. The work is an enormous representation of a paper wasps’ nest that is lying on the ground as if fallen from a tree. In the fall, wasps abandon their elaborately built homes for more substantial shelter in winter.
Peabody holds a BFA from Washington University, St. Louis, and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. A native of Kentucky, she lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work has been shown in Louisville, Kentucky and New York City. This is her first public art project.
The work is located at the corner of Washington and DeKalb Streets.
This project was made possible with funding from Forest City Ratner Companies.
David Hardy, Field Display # 2
October 1, 2007 to January 5, 2008
Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of the artist
Description:
David Hardy was thinking about the experience of looking at art when he made Field Display #2. At first glance, the sculpture looks like a familiar structure built to shelter information on a forest trail: a wooden display standing on two boxy legs with a shingled roof. Inside, a claw-footed goblet of unknown origin sits behind glass, and outside, planted in front, are two blue galoshes, empty except for lumps of black sludge. “I was thinking of the movie Repo Man, in which a man just explodes, leaving his boots behind,” says the artist. “I wanted to address the problem of public art and ‘the art experience,’ where the anticipation of the event is often so much more than the event itself. But what if the event itself was the cause of excitement?”
New York-based David Hardy has a BA from Brown, an MFA from Yale, and completed the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture program. His work was exhibited in group exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, SculptureCenter, and in P.S.1’s Greater New York. He has had solo exhibitions of his work in
Sweden, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Funded by Forest City Ratner Companies
Stefany Anne Golberg, Anytime, Now. Somewhere, Here.
October 3 to to December 30, 2007
Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of the artist
Description:
Anytime, Now. Somewhere, Here is a multimedia, site-specific work based on the diary of a New York immigrant named Henry. It consists of a walk-in “observation cabinet” on the peninsula in Prospect Park, with copies of excerpts from Henry’s diary that are distributed to viewers for free. Henry’s diary tells the story of a man obsessed with the relationship between wonder and memory. The entries include descriptions of walks he took through the park, with references to Frederic Law Olmsted and his ideas about natural space in cities. In each cabinet is a song, written by the artist and based on diary entries.
Golberg, co-founder and Executive Director of Flux Factory, has been involved with many public projects, including Miracle on 43rd Street, a tour which led the public on adventures down 43rd Street, Queens, and Secret Spaces—part of the New Museum’s “Counter Culture” exhibition (2004). More recently, she created Romantic Moment on a Bench Looking Out at the Brooklyn Bridge: A Musical for the D.U.M.B.O. Arts Under the Bridge Festival.
Cameron Gainer, Nessie
October 22 to December 14, 2007
Salt Marsh Nature Preserve, Marine Park, Brooklyn
Image: Nessie, Courtesy of Cameron Gainer
Description:
On the morning of April 19, 1934, British Gynecologist Robert Kenneth Wilson supposedly shot a photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. Because of his profession, the image was referred to as “The Surgeon’s Photo.” The image quickly became the most iconic and recognized photo of the elusive serpent. It was not until 1994 that it was revealed as a hoax. For this project, Cameron Gainer has staged a replica of the mythic serpent in the salt marsh off of Marine Park.
Cameron Gainer's work has most recently been seen in New York at Socrates Sculpture Park and at the French Cultural Institute in Turin, Italy. Gainer works in multiple mediums, including video, sculpture, and photography. He received his MFA from Tyler School of Art in 2003 and his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999. He lives and works in Ridgewood New York.
This project was made possible by Forest City Ratner Companies.
Javier Téllez, Games are Forbidden in the Labyrinth
November 2007
McCarren Pool, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of Damon Hart-Davis
Description:
Artist Javier Téllez brings the ancient parable of the ‘Blind Men and the Elephant’ to life. In keeping with various versions of the tale, from a Buddhist fable to the 19th Century poem by the writer John Godfrey Saxe, six visually impaired people will touch a different part of an elephant, just one part, and then describe the experience. Their responses illustrate how reality and understanding are shaped by perspective and the relativity of absolute truth.
Téllez’s action will take place on a closed set where it will be filmed and screened for the public at a later date. Games are Forbidden in the Labyrinth is the final project of Creative Time’s ‘Six Actions for New York City,’ co-curated by Mark Beasley and David Platzker.
A project of Creative Time.
Leonard Ursachi, Hiding Place
May 5 2007 to August 31, 2007
Prospect Park, facing Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn
Image: Leonard Ursachi, Hiding Place
Description:
Ursachi's Hiding Place, a cylindrical bunker made from willow branches, is over 8-feet tall and 8-feet in diameter. The shelter has three "windows" with mirrors instead of glass.
"Because Hiding Place lacks a door and its windows are reflective shields, viewers can only imagine its interior," said Ursachi, "It is a receptacle for imagining and the yearning through which its simple iconic form may shift from bunker to refuge to nest-home. With this sculpture, I continue my investigation of the world of porous borders, vulnerable shelters, and mutating identities that is the 21st century experience of home."
Leonard Ursachi, a Brooklyn-based artist, left his native Romania in 1980 and has exhibited his work internationally. This is his third public art project with Parks & Recreation. Ursachi exhibited an earlier version of Hiding Place next to a 15th century stone fortress in Romania's Carpathian Mountains.
Osman Akan, The Third Bridge
October 14, 2007 to January 18, 2008
Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn
Image: Ripple, Osman Akan
Photograph by Kelly Barrie
Description:
The Third Bridge is a site-specific work of fiber optic grass fields temporarily surrounding the pathways of Brooklyn Bridge Park on the East River waterfront near the Manhattan Bridge in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The artist uses the site’s location, between the two physical bridges, to comment on the concepts of technology and network. This project marks the first of a series of solo commissioned works in a new program, Outer Space, being developed by the Dumbo Arts Center.
Osman Akan was born on the Black Sea coast of Turkey and since 1997 has lived and worked in the United States.
Presented by the Dumbo Art center (dac).
Cheryl Farber Smith, Leaning Firm
January 2007 to July 2007
Columbus Park, Brooklyn
Image: Cheryl Farber Smith, Leaning Firm
Description:
Cheryl Farber Smith's aluminum sculpture fuses simple geometric shapes to create a composition that simultaneously suggests motion and repose. Painted with a high-gloss red finish, it stands 9'4" high, 7'5" wide and 5'7", deep.
Manhattan
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.
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.
Sarah Lucas, Perceval
November 15, 2007 to April 22, 2008
Doris Freedman Plaza, Central Park, Manhattan
Image: Sarah Lucas, Perceval
Courtesy of MurderMe, London
Description:
Perceval is a life-sized horse and cart, a replica of the sort of china ornament that have had pride of place on many British mantelpieces. Scaled up, the horse is majestic in his power but offers an unthreatening sense of stolid comfort in his benign reliability. In the proudly fashioned cart are two concrete cast squashes, outsize and off-scale, fertility symbols implicating a competitive rural contest to rival the ritual of the maypole. These giant vegetables are cast in cement, one of Lucas’s favored materials, and take the replication of the horse and cart knick-knack away from kitsch, the crudeness of this signature Lucas gesture thrown into sharper relief by the high finish of the bronze sculpture.
Perceval reflects a fascination for Englishness evident in much of Lucas’s work. The title is borrowed from the name of one of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table: raised in a forest by his mother, the virtuous and noble Perceval meets the knights as they pass and goes off the join them, later becoming involved in the quest for the Holy Grail. The story has been reworked in various contemporary versions, notably Eliot’s The Wasteland and Wagner’s opera Parsifal, in which version the eponymous hero is the one to recover the spear used to pierce Christ during his crucifixion.
Sarah Lucas is one of the most significant contemporary women artists working in London today. She is among the group of artists who are credited with being a catalyst for the Young British Artist (YBA) movement, which has brought to light the likes of artists including Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Tracey Emin, and others. Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums, including Tate Modern in London, Kunsthalle Zurich, Kunstverein Hamburg, and others.
This installation is a project of the Public Art Fund.
George Rickey, Two Open Rectangles
October 1, 2007 to April 23, 2008
Union Square, Manhattan
Image: Courtesy of the Palaias Royale and Marlborough Gallery
Description:
Two Open Rectangles, a stainless steel kinetic sculpture, is made to move gently in response to any gust of wind. In this way, the sculpture, like other kinetic work in the artist’s oeuvre, translates the transitory nature of the wind’s movement into the more physical form of steel.
George Rickey (1907-2002) began his career as a painter in the cubist style. He later changed mediums and began his career in sculpture, starting with mobiles. Rickey’s mobile work eventually became the large, steel, kinetic forms for which he is most well-known. His work was included in the 1967 exhibition Sculpture in Environment.
Presented by Marlborough Chelsea.
Boaz Vaadia, Asa; Ba’al & Yizhaq; Yo’ah with Dog; Asaf
Morningside Park
Boaz Vaadia, Asaf & Yo’ah, Amaryahu
Broadway Malls at 114th and 117th streets, Manhattan
October 1, 2007 to April 22, 2008
Image: Yo’ah with Dog
Photo by: Arielle Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Boaz Vaadia’s group of bronze and bluestone boulder sculptures placed throughout Morningside Park and two locations on the Broadway Malls create collectively, as the artist says, a “contemplative connection between various communities.” The works are site-specific in that the materials Vaadia uses- slate, shingle, bluestone