Art in the Parks

Description:

Jamaica Flux is a contemporary public art project that includes 24 multidisciplinary, site-specific artworks. On view in Rufus King Park are works by Lishan Chang (a large, translucent temporary wall), Shigeko Hirakawa (light sensitive tree leaves that change colors during the day), Christopher K. Ho (icosahedrons: benches of the future), Diane Meyer (a trading post where community members can exchange objects), and Carol Pereira (an upside-down, Baroque-style cone structure). The project is curated by Heng-Gil Han.

Jamaica Flux is an outgrowth of Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning’s (JCAL) extremely well-received Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2004 project. Jamaica Flux 2007 challenges traditional ideas about where art should be displayed and explores the relationship between art, commerce, urban renewal, and community. By facilitating an inclusive dialogue between artists, curators, art-historians, community residents, business owners, and visitors to Jamaica, Queens, the project examines issues such as identity and cultural heritage, immigrant experiences, capitalism and technology, and their impacts on contemporary arts practices, and the historic specificity of place and time.

JCAL is a 35-year-old multidisciplinary urban arts center serving the community of Southeast Queens. Jamaica, Queens is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the country, and JCAL programming strives to reflect the diversity of its vibrant community.

Description:
Elizabeth Egbert's sculptures are expressive and elegant constructions in wood. Much of her recent works are functional as well as sculptural, including Tibetan Bench. Ms. Egbert has been working and exhibiting in New York since the mid 1970s. A Staten Islander since 1979, Ms. Egbert currently serves as Executive Director of the Staten Island Museum, a general interest museum located opposite the Staten Island Ferry. Her work developed its natural and organic quality after the move to the Island, when she was able to work outside in her garden. Her current work is returning to the more linear and minimal quality that characterized her first major pieces from the 1970s, following the completion of her MA in sculpture from NYU.

Description:

This outdoor exhibition of sculpture by Gudjon Bjarnason is his second at Snug Harbor Cultural Center.  Bjarnason is deeply involved with the choice and arrangement of his materials; his “exploded” works explore the tension between the simultaneous veneration and destruction of the materials that make up the artist’s work.

Born in Reykajvik, Iceland in 1959, Bjarnason studied art and architecture in the United States. He returned to Iceland and had his first major solo exhibition at Kjarvalsstadir, the Reykjavik Art Museum, in 1990. Since then, his work has been featured in nearly fifty exhibitions in Iceland, the United States, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Spain, and recently in France in connection with the cultural cities of Europe. His work is on view in fall 2007 at The Amelie A. Wallace Gallery at SUNY College at Old Westbury.

Description:

This exhibition features Tim Hetherington's raw, emotional, sometimes beautiful photographs of Liberia. He documented the fall of Charles Taylor in 2003, the election of Ellen Johnson in 2005, and the early work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Hetherington captures lives irrevocably changed by war. While he does not try to explain, his images beg the question of how democracy can take hold in a country ravaged by violence.

Born in Liverpool, United Kingdom in 1970, Hetherington studied English and Classics at Oxford University before taking up photography in 1996. He is a recipient of numerous awards, including a research grant from the Hasselblad Foundation, two prizes from World Press Photo, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts.