Art in the Parks

Description:

Otterness’s bronze sculpture Large Sad Sphere shows a hunched figure sitting on a block. The figure, with its rotund body and elongated legs, is recognizable as Otterness’s signature style and part of the cast of characters that populate the artist’s work. This work is another entry in the artist’s continued exploration of, and interest in, the interaction of the public with his work.

Tom Otterness has several previous works on permanent view throughout the city, including the MTA’s commissioned work Life Underground on view primarily in the 14th Street/Eighth Avenue subway station. Otterness’s work will be concurrently on view at Marlborough Chelsea in Tom Otterness: The Public Unconscious on view from October 4 through November 3, 2007.

Presented by Marlborough Chelsea, in cooperation with the Hudson River Park Trust.

Description:

Milestones to Recovery celebrates the rebirth Lower Manhattan has experienced over the past five-and-a-half years, through the exhibit of 30 4-foot by 6-foot photographs.

"In the aftermath of 9/11, New Yorkers gathered in their parks as they remembered, reflected and tried to recover," said NYC Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "Susan Watts's striking photographs in Milestones to Recovery eloquently and emotionally capture the spirit of this vibrant community as it overcame and thrived. We are proud to be a part of this recovery process and to welcome residents and visitors back to The Battery as they witness the remarkable resilience that Lower Manhattanites have demonstrated."

Susan Watts has been an award-winning photojournalist in New York for more than 13 years. A staff photographer at the Daily News since 1995, she covers top local, national and international news stories. Her 9/11/01 work is archived in the permanent photography collections of both the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress.

A native New Yorker, Ms. Watts attended New York University and graduated in 1991 with a bachelor of fine arts in film.

Description:

This exhibition features new works by the Socrates Sculpture Park’s current resident artists: Martin Basher, Chelsea Beck, Kim Beck & Osman Khan, Michael Berens, Sari Carel, Adriana Farmiga, Kimberley Hart, Rajkamal Kahlon, Jason Bailer Losh, Matthew Lusk, Jong Il Ma, Ted McCann, Juniper Perlis, and Harriet Salmon.

Fellowship artists are awarded a $5,000 grant and a residency in the Park’s outdoor studio and are provided with technical support and access to tools, materials, and equipment to facilitate the production of new sculptures and installations 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.

Socrates Sculpture Park is open 365 days a year from 10:00 a.m. to sunset and is located at the intersection of Broadway and Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City.

Description:

Spectacle Path invites visitors to become part of a new visual experience, one in which familiar and mundane views will be multiplied, magnified, and distorted with Fresnel lenses and kaleidoscopes installed in a storefront and on a park’s fences. The path is installed in storefronts throughout the neighborhood and on the fences of the park.

Vydavy in Russian literally translates to "you and you." Paired with sindikat, the name loosely translates as “you collective.” The collective's activities include video, performance art, poetry, and architecture. In recent years, vydavy sindikat initiated a number of community-based projects such as Public Gathering (2005), a Russian-English children’s paper (2005-present), and Commuter’s Dream (2007-present). Work by vydavy sindikat has been exhibited at the Center for Architecture of the American Institute of Architects (2003), as part of Float at Socrates Sculpture Park (2005), in Slow Revolution at Rotunda Gallery (2006), in their solo exhibition Computing the Social at LMAKprojects (2006), and the Second Moscow Biennial (2007).

Spectacle Path is on view at Linden Park, between 103rd and 104th streets and 41st and 42nd avenues; Tulcingo Restaurant at 40-19 National Street; Western Union at 103-16 Roosevelt Avenue; and Antioque.

Description:

Mike Estabrook asked community members to submit a favorite location in Corona and what they like to do there. Once a week, Estabrook publishes a short animation, depicting the character La Coronita doing the things inspired by the stories of community members. At these locations, a small painted wooden cut-out of La Coronita is installed (look for her at the Unisphere and other locations around the park). The animations are on view in the project room at the Queens Museum, where a new edition is added each week. The comics will be published in a local, bilingual newspaper.

Estabrook is based in Brooklyn, NY. He uses drawing, animation, video, and painting as a means of embodying a political imagination that can be both cute and grotesque. His work has been shown at ABC No Rio, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Queens Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum, PPOW, Esso, and other spaces in New York and abroad. In 2005 and 2006, he participated in the Artists in the Marketplace program at the Bronx Museum, in 2007 at Elsewhere Artists Collaborative residency in Greensboro, NC, and in 2007 and 2008 at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program. He received his MFA from Queens College in 2005.

Description:

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.

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.