Art in the Parks

Charles Ginnever’s piece Medusa (1986) is located at 145th Street in Riverside Park and echoes his sculpture High Rise, sited on a neighboring lawn.   This exhibition marks Ginnever’s return to Parks, having exhibited in Carl Schurz Park in 1967 as part of Sculpture in Environment, one of the city’s first public art exhibitions. Charles Ginnever was born in San Mateo, CA in 1931. He is best known for his large-scale, open form works for the outdoors. He created the first of these in 1958 with abandoned railroad ties and structural steel. The result was a deconstruction of prevailing sculptural spatial concepts that he continues to examine. A contemporary of Mark di Suvero and Richard Serra, who also exhibit monumental steel pieces,  Ginnever’s sculptures have a trick of the eye and appear to warp as someone looks at the pieces from different angles.

Outer Seed Shadow #01 was conceived by Spanish artist Juanli Carrión in 2012 when after years of living in New York he started to consider permanent residence in the United States. He wanted to revisit the long-established idea of the American “melting pot” and investigate the new realities of immigrant life in 2014, particularly in New York, the most symbolic of immigrant cities. Carrión conducted a series of on-camera interviews with immigrants living throughout Manhattan about their personal experiences of arriving to the city. At the end of the discussion, each interviewee selected a plant that exists both in their country of origin and in the United States, which represents both them and their community in the public garden.

The 1,000 square foot garden is in the shape of Manhattan and features dozens of plants selected by immigrants living in the borough. Placed according to the interviewees’ real-life locations on the island, the plants represent the diversity of the city. The garden will host a series of free public programs beginning June 7 that includes artist-led tours, lectures, hands-on garden workshops and “Open Garden” days. For the complete schedule of programming visit: www.outerseedshadow.org/public-program.

This project is in partnership with the Horticultural Society of New York

Hilgemann’s installation, Moments in a Stream, will parade along the avenue in seven locations, from 52nd Street to 67th Street, with large-scale pieces—some in groups of two or more—placed on the grassy medians. The seven sculptures, ranging in size from 8 to 20 feet in height, were created especially for the Park Avenue installation using a unique vacuum process, which “implodes” geometric shapes causing the material to deform according to natural laws.

Hilgemann’s “implosion” process begins by fabricating perfect, geometrically pure stainless steel forms, which are meticulously welded and polished to satin gloss. After the pieces are complete, the artist slowly pulls the air out with a vacuum pump, putting the natural atmospheric pressure to sculptural use and collapsing the forms into their final shape. In a delicate balance of planning and chance each piece acquires individual character demonstrating unexpected and striking possibilities of the material.

Sculpture locations include Cube Flower at 52nd-53rd Street; Threesome (Caryatids) at 54th Street, Triple at 57th Street; Dancers (Tango) at 59th Street; Double at 64th Street; Cube at 65th Street and Habakuk at 67th Street.

This exhibition is presented by The Fund For Park Avenue and Magnan Metz Gallery.

Since 1886, the Statue of Liberty has invited immigrants from across the world to seek out their own piece of worldly paradise here in the United States. Today, each of the 50 states has its own town called “Paradise.” With this installation, celebrated artist Caraballo-Farman offers visitors to Battery Park directions and distances to each of the 50 Paradises within eye-shot of Lady Liberty.

The exhibition is brought to you by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Strong-Cuevas, whose work has been acclaimed by critics around the world and whose powerful, dramatic sculptures are in numerous public and private collections internationally, is exhibiting a large bronze, ARCH III, at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. The arch is a symbolic gateway to peace and cooperation represented by the United Nations, which is at the east end of 47 Street.

Joshua Ruff, the Long Island Museum’s Director of Collections and Interpretations, wrote: “The monumental scale of her sculptures holds their own. But regardless of size, Strong-Cuevas’ art has an enormous, captivating grip... [her] work is both thought-provoking and energetic, the result of many years of careful and inspired artistic evolution and wonderfully diverse influences...Her work really must be seen and enjoyed in person for a full appreciation.”

Marking Rachel Feinstein’s first public art exhibition in the U.S. and comprising her largest sculptural works to date, the installation consists of three follies–structures that were popular in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture, built with decorative rather than functional purpose. Feinstein’s sculptures are executed in graphically printed and detailed panels of thin metal, ranging from eight to 26 feet tall. The three structures include a house perched on a towering cliff, a Rococo-style hut, and a flying ship moored high in a tree, supported by a mast extending to the ground.

Best known for her fanciful sculptures, Feinstein’s stage-set follies for Mad. Sq. Art are made of powder-coated aluminum with applied surface illustration. They are not inhabitable as the works are sculptural reliefs: they have active, three-dimensional facades and flat backs with structural supports. Installed on three park lawns, the structures will evoke theatrical scenery in which the park visitors are the actors.

This exhibition is presented by Mad. Sq. Art.

Park Avenue Paper Chase, a series of seven sculptures by artist Alice Aycock, grace the canyons of Manhattan this spring and summer. Six works are on view between 52nd and 57th Streets and a seventh work is at Park Avenue and 66th Street in front of the Park Avenue Armory. Aycock has long been one of very few women exploring the relationship between structure, site, and viewer on an architectural scale, like her peers Richard Serra and Mark di Suvero.

Ranging in size from 12 to 27 feet in height 18 to 70 feet in length, the aluminum and fiberglass works in the new installation forms an arresting presence in the heart of midtown Manhattan. According to Aycock “I tried to visualize the movement of wind energy as it flowed up and down the avenue creating random whirlpools, touching down here and there and sometimes forming dynamic three-dimensional massing of forms. The sculptural assemblages suggest waves, wind turbulence, turbines, and vortexes of energy.”

Many of the new works incorporate images of wheels and turbines and references to energy in the form of spirals, whirlwinds, whirlpools, spinning tops, and whirly-gigs. One of the works references the expressive quality of wind through drapery and the chaotic beauty of flow dynamics. The sculptures can be read from both sides of the avenue and the visual narrative plays to both the uptown and downtown movement of traffic patterns. Aycock continues “As much as the sculptures are obviously placed on the mall, I wanted the work to have a random, haphazard quality – in some cases, piling up on itself, with others spinning off into the air.”

Sculpture locations include Maelstrom at 52nd-53rd Street; Hoop-La at 53rd Street; Twin Vortexes at 54th Street, Spin-The-Spin at 55th Street; Waltzing Matilda at 56th Street; Cyclone Twist at 57th Street and Super Twister III at 66th Street.

On view in Inwood Hill, Arch designed by Katelyn Renner is inspired by the Henry Hudson Bridge’s arch, this piece was produced by building small sections of metal into one large mass. Artists manipulated the metal in interesting and abstract ways, using aluminum tape to create relief-like images.

The Inwood Sculpture Crawl is sponsored by Scribble Art Workshop and the NYC Parks. Each of the 10 sculptures installed in Inwood Hill Park and Dyckman Farmhouse was designed by a scribble teacher and created by collaborations of artists ranging in age from 18 months to adulthood. Themes highlight the natural surroundings of the urban Inwood neighborhood and focuses on the stark contrast of natural and manmade materials.

Wander the Dyckman Farmhouse garden and discover the Scribble Art Workshop sculptures tucked away into this neighborhood oasis. Seven sculptures, including those created with public participation, are on view.

The Inwood Sculpture Crawl is sponsored by Scribble Art Workshop and the NYC Parks. Each of the 10 sculptures installed in Inwood Hill Park and Dyckman Farmhouse was designed by a scribble teacher and created by collaborations of artists ranging in age from 18 months to adulthood. Themes highlight the naturalsurroundings of the urbanInwood neighborhood and focuses on the stark contrast of natural and manmade materials.

This exhibition is presented by Scribble Art Workshop and Dyckman Farmhouse Museum