Art in the Parks

Flanagan, an internationally renowned British sculptor, is best known for his expressive bronze hares modeled in varying poses of dynamic energy. The series of hares, which he began in 1980, are often engaged in human activities such as playing musical instruments or sports, dancing, and interacting with technology. They are often rendered in a monumental scale, as is the Large Left-Handed Drummer, with its long wiry limbs and ears that capture a playful and jubilant spirit.

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Panoramic Echoes is a sound sculpture that is projected into the north end of the park from speakers located on rooftops of historic buildings around the park. Layers of environmental sounds move, float, and echo above the park's predominant sonic background of traffic noise. The sculpture interacts with the live sounds of the now-silenced chimes of the Metropolitan Life Tower facing the park, once the tallest building in the world. The bells at the top of the tower, which have been silent for more than five years, tolled the hours for park visitors for over eighty years and will ring again as part of this sound sculpture.

Bill Fontana has been an innovator in sound art for more than 30 years. Last summer, Bill’s sound sculpture Harmonic Bridge in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern transformed live sounds of the Millennium Bridge into evocative art piece. Speeds of Time in 2004, also in London, was based on Big Ben’s bells. The MetLife Tower bells play the same melody as Big Ben, the Westminster Chimes, from a melody from Handel’s Messiah.

This project is presented by the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

Liz Larner is best known for her engaging investigations into the physicality of objects in space. 2001 is Larner’s virtuoso reinterpretation of the two quintessential geometric forms of modernist sculpture – the sphere and the cube. Twelve feet high, deep and wide, and painted in green and purple iridescent urethane, 2001 is an enigmatic shape-shifter: its contour and color change with the viewer’s angle and the overall light conditions so that it seems to be both at rest and undergoing metamorphosis.

Larner lives and works in Los Angeles. She received a BFA from California Institute of Arts (1985). Her work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial (2006), Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2005); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2006).

Organized by the Public Art Fund.

Manolo Valdes at Bryant Park is an exhibition of six monumental bronze sculptures arranged among Bryant Park’s beautifully scaled open space and neo-classical architecture.

Four of Valdes' sculptures depict female heads, their calm facial composure and structured equilibrium offset rhythmically by dynamic ornamental headpieces. Two of the four works, all of which measure over 13 feet high, are debuting in Bryant Park. Accompanying these forms are two groups of elegantly imposing figures based on Diego Velazquez' Infanta Margarita and Reina Mariana from the painting Las Meninas. The works are courtesy of Marlborough Gallery working in cooperation with the Parks Department, the Bryant Park Corporation, and Instituto Cervantes, the cultural arm of the Spanish government.

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This installation features a prefabricated security booth, but the booth does not function as a security node or personnel shelter. Rather, it contains a tree with small video surveillance monitors mounted to its branches, perched on the limbs in such a way as to be reminiscent of birds in their natural habitat.

Canaries originated from The Canary Islands, which were once referred to as "The Fortunate Islands." For centuries, The Fortunate Islands were thought to reside at the edge of the world. This, suggests the artist, is not entirely dissimilar from the way in which many Manhattan residents regard the lower tip of their island; a neighborhood at the edge of their world, which also happens to be the world's financial center. Simultaneously earnest and ironic, the title provides an entry point to the project's multi-layered metaphors.

Socrates Sculpture Park’s annual Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition includes the following artists for 2007: Tim Clifford, Linda Ganjian, Vandana Jain, Ken Landauer, Caroline Mak, Greg Martin, Ohad Meromi, Rachel Owens, Ricky Sears, Shane Aslan Selzer, Changamire Semakokiro, and Brian Wondergem.

EAF artists are selected through an open call for proposals and are awarded a grant and a residency in the Park’s outdoor studio. Fellowship artists are also provided with technical support and access to tools, materials, and equipment to facilitate the production of large-scale public sculptures for exhibition in the Park.

The fellows develop their projects throughout the summer in the open studio and on site in the landscape, offering visitors the opportunity to experience both the creation and presentation of their works. Representing a broad range of materials, working methods, and subject matter, the diverse sculptural works in this exhibition are presented against the Park’s spectacular waterfront view of the Manhattan skyline.

For more information, please visit www.socratessculpturepark.org.

It's My Park segment about Socrates Sculpture Park.

SculptureCenter in Long Island City presents Jeppe Hein’s Modified Social Bench I in conjunction with an installation of the artist’s work there through November 25, 2007, including four more of Hein’s benches. The benches stem from the artist’s consideration of social space and the way in which the physical environment shapes one's behavior. These sculptures, Hein's most recent exploration of the form and context of the park bench, present impossible seating structures. One is a circular bench, another has a seat that appears to have melted and dropped to ground level, another has legs that arch so that the seat is actually upside down and the back of the bench is touching the ground. While playful, these works invite us to consider an altered perspective on landscape and public space.

Jeppe Hein was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and lives and works in Berlin. His work has been exhibited at the 50th Biennale di Venezia; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Barbican Art Center, London; and the FRAC Center, Orlando.