Art in the Parks

Description:
The 8'x 16' murals were installed as a collaboration between Parks Temporary Public Art Program and the Bronx Museum of Art.

Cook-Disney worked with the Collaborative Arts Program (CAP): Artists in Community Residencies, a museum sponsored public art education program, to produce portraits in response to the tragic events of September 11. With the help of community organizations, Cook-Dizney selected five participants that he interviewed using questions around peace and democracy. The interviewees were then invited to help sketch projections of themselves and their quotations onto plywood murals. Now that the murals are placed in public spaces, the entire community becomes engaged in the dialogue around peace and democracy.

The colorful and thought provoking murals that bring a vibrancy to the community during the winter months will be on display until June.

Description:
Fritz Koenig's The Sphere, a 45,000 pound sculpture made of steel and bronze, adorned the fountain at the World Trade Center's Tobin Plaza from 1971 to September 11, 2001. Bent and damaged, but still recognizable, the sculpture has been relocated to Battery Park, where it stands as a powerful temporary memorial commemorating the lives of those lost in the World Trade Center attack and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On September 11, 2002, a dedication was held to officially recognize the artwork as an interim memorial and to light an eternal flame in memory of those lost.

The Sphere is on long-term loan from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

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Description:
The Bird of Imagining is a steel sculpture adorned with colorful wooden feathers. It is based on the poem written by Richard Lewis of the Touchstone Center. Students from The Children's Workshop School painted over 200 of the wood feathers to cover the bird's wings. The kids from the Children's Workshop School provided the inspiration for this sculpture. Their original sketches and writings were on display at the opening event on June 13, 2002.

Description:
The current Public Art Fund presentation at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza is Conversation Piece, a group of five life-size bronze figures by the late Spanish sculptor and installation artist Juan Munoz. Over the past decade, Munoz gained international recognition for his "conversation pieces". These groups of figures, with their mute faces and expressive gestures, depict psychologically-charged human interactions. The five figures of Conversation Piece variously lean together, whisper, and ignore one another, transforming the plaza into a theatrical space where a mysterious drama plays out.

For additional information about the project, visit the Public Art Fund website.

Description:
Originally placed at a site in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Leonard Ursachi's sculpture Open House has been re-installed in lower Manhattan. According to the artist, Open House explores the vulnerability of shelter, the mutating nature of identity and the porous nature of borders.

The sculpture, a rectangular structure with walls made from wood strips suspended by hinges, suggests the frame of a house. The walls, perforated and permeable, tremble and sway with even a light breeze. In the interior of the house, the wood strips become mirrored stainless steel. Visitors who step inside the house can experience their own fragmented reflections while viewing the activities of the park through gaps in the wall. On the house's only piece of furniture, a small table gilded in gold, stands a photo of Ursachi as a young man. This photo was taken in 1971 in front of Ursachi's family home in Romania before it was bulldozed by the state.

Description:
Installed in small traffic islands and park triangles along Canal Street, Simultaneous Life consists of five windsocks made from silver metallic fabric and mounted on 18-foot poles. Modeled after windsocks used in aviation, the windsocks are intended to provide a visual link between the frenetic street-level activity of Canal Street and the larger cityscape. Viewing the windsocks from street level, pedestrians become aware of the direction of the wind, the sky and the buildings rising above the street. When viewed from above, the windsocks form a silver dashed line down Canal Street, drawing attention to the place of the street in the larger cityscape.

Simultaneous Life is one of six public art projects exhibited along Canal Street as part of Art in General on Canal, a group exhibition of public art celebrating Art in General's twenty years of exhibitions and programs in Lower Manhattan.

For more information about the show, visit Art in General.

Description:
Octopus II by American artist Gloria Kisch is a monumental stainless steel sculpture from a series called Octopi made for Hammarskjold Plaza. The piece is 20 feet tall and its longest tentacles span nine feet. Octopus II was installed in March and will be on view at the plaza leading to the United Nations through September 22, 2002.

Gloria Kisch has exhibited her work widely throughout the United States including the Las Vegas Art Museum, PSI, Institute of Contemporary Art, Newport Harbor Art Museum, and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Kisch has represented the United States in the Biennial of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Description:
New York City artist Nancy Hwang's performance, titled S, involved giving free shampoos, conditioning treatments and scalp massages to passersby on the small asphalt triangle that is Lt. Joseph L. Petrosino Park. The project was designed to be "an experiment in economic and personal exchange, in which intimate contact occurs between strangers." Hwang set up in the park a professional shampoo station inside a circle of potted palms, with in-kind donations of shampoo, conditioner, and plumbing. S is the third and last in a series of performances for Hwang, who previously tended a bar at White Columns and gave anonymous manicures at Artists Space.

In-kind donations, support and funding have been generously provided by Storefront for Art & Architecture, White Columns, Artists Space Independent Project Grants, Moon Belt Company, Laicale, Bicycle Habitat, Chris King of Plants, Dae Heung Services, Mr. Beauty Equipment Ltd., Pfiff Restaurant and Bar, Sung Studio, Agnes Gund, and Alanna Heiss and Fred Sherman.

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Description:
Sculptor Michael Poast chose the title of this sculpture to reference his inspiration, Italian Baroque Sculptor Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, and to describe the trajectory that is the extension of the lines that Poast articulates in welded steel.

This installation is part of Poast's Color Music series in which he represents music in physical space. Using the visual qualities of color and shape as a form of musical notation and the sculpture itself as an instrument, Poast explains that "the system is based on the idea that color sensations can trigger correlations to musical sound in a performer who is sensitive to visual experience. By combining visual and aural stimuli, the system and its use can result in an extremely powerful form of expression."

Description:
This impressive work by Manolo Valdes is a reinterpretation of the ancient Iberian sculpture La Dama de Elche, and measures 10 feet in height, 7 3/4 feet in width, and over 6 1/2 feet in depth.

La Dama had its public debut in Paris in the Spring of 2001, where it was included in the exhibition "Fifty Years of Spanish Sculpture" in the Gardens of the Palais Royal, which later traveled to Madrid. The artist is particularly pleased to bring his work to the general public here, as he has adopted New York as his home and workplace since 1988.

La Dama is a contemporary work that speaks loudly of the great history of Spanish art and culture. It is based on a well-known polychrome stone Iberian work believed to date from 500-300 B.C. Deeply inspired by the Iberian treasure, Valdes has transformed the iconic formal elements of the ancient work – a bust of a woman with a very complex headdress of ornate coils on either side of her face – into the medium and forms of contemporary sculpture. The striking simplicity and geometric symmetry of Valdes' sculpture display a modern conception of aesthetic beauty while still conveying the elegance and majesty of the subject.