Art in the Parks

Jennifer Cecere’s artwork aims to integrate a feeling of domestic handiwork into the built environment. Doilies were invented by industrious women to hide and protect worn and frayed furnishings (maybe feelings too). Through the variety of materials that they can be made from, the ways in which they can be displayed, and their references to a variety of subject matter makes doilies very diverse. This double–sided, doily–shaped bench enlivens this small park in the midst of a busy thoroughfare and new construction by taking something intimate and domestic and placing it outdoors. The handicraft of the bench demonstrates a familiarity with domestic materials that ties us with our fragile environment and revives traditions that when integrated with art and architecture reflect our hopes and dreams.

With robust plantings of native grasses and flowers, and herbs, Meg Webster’s Concave Room for Bees is both sculptural and ecological. Webster highlights the complex interactions of organic systems in the piece in a variety of ways, such as selecting greenery that attracts pollinators and exposing the soil layers for viewing. Park visitors are encouraged to use paths to walk through the work, experiencing it in the round. The work is multi-sensory, a mix of botanical aromas, insect hums, dewy air, and vibrantly colored flora.

This exhibition was originally part of LANDMARK, a series of artist commissions and projects that marked Socrates Sculpture Park’s 30th anniversary in 2016. The works transformed the land both physically and symbolically. LANDMARK directly addressed the idea of place as intimately tied to social and ecological structures, to maintenance and stewardship, and to evolution over time.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park.

Inaugurated in 2000, Socrates Sculpture Park’s annual Emerging Artist Fellowship (EAF) Exhibition offers a rare opportunity for emerging artists to realize original, large-scale, complex outdoor work. The 15 selected artists are provided with an open studio along with financial, administrative, and technical support. From May through September EAF artists work on-site, negotiating the physical and conceptual challenges of production in the park’s outdoor studio space, enhancing the park’s popular summer programming. The resulting site-specific works are physically and ideologically diverse and address the past, present, and future of the park as it celebrates its 30th anniversary year.

This year’s Emerging Artist Fellows were selected through a highly competitive process by the park’s 2016 Curatorial Advisors, Larissa Harris (Curator, Queens Museum) and Amanda Hunt (Assistant Curator, Studio Museum in Harlem). The 2016 Emerging Artist Fellows are: Liene Bosquê, Travis Boyer, Andrew Brehm, Lea Cetera, Dachal Choi and Mathew Suen, Onyedika Chuke, Galería Perdida, Dylan Gauthier, Dmitri Hertz, Madeline Hollander, Olalekan Jeyifous, Lia Lowenthal, Sable Elyse Smith, Elizabeth Tubergen, and Bryan Zanisnik.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park.

For her Broadway Billboard, APPLAUSE, Oppenheim creates the vision of a “truly” blue rose by digitally shifting color tones of a stock photograph. This work evolves from the artist’s ongoing study of color and perception, focusing on the impossibility of a “natural” blue rose. Through research Oppenheim learned that blue roses cannot occur without human intervention. For centuries blue roses were created by adding blue dye to white roses, but in 2004 a Japanese company produced a blue rose through genetic engineering.

Appropriately, folklore of various cultures often use the blue rose as symbols of the impossible or unattainable. In tales and poetry, it has also represented unrequited love, blinding phantasm, and deceptive illusion. Now situated in the leafy landscape and post-industrial neighborhood at Socrates Sculpture Park, it takes on an enigmatic tone. As genetic modification organisms are currently hotly debated—both championed as a solution to global hunger and derided as potentially toxic agents–are these blue roses ominous or gloriousΑ

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park.

This year’s winning proposal for Folly, an annual juried competition for architects and designers, comes from the New York City-based firm Hou de Sousa, with their inventive proposal Sticks. Modeled to fit and complement existing site conditions, Sticks is a simple assembly of standard dimensional lumber interconnected to form a structural frame for educational and community use, as well as for providing art and material storage and display space. Its porous façade reflects the park’s spirit of accessibility and dedication to transparency of process.

Hou de Sousa’s proposal was selected from submissions from around the world and reviewed by a jury of five esteemed architects and artists. In past years, the Folly program has investigated the intersection between sculpture and architecture through the conceptual framework of “follies”—temporary structures that intentionally served no utilitarian purpose. Marking the program’s fifth and the park’s thirtieth anniversaries, Folly 2016 marks a departure from previous years’ competitions by asking entrants to design a functional structure to enhance the park’s public programs. The result is a durable design that explores the relationship between art and architecture, while also creatively enhancing the park’s education studio, where more than 10,000 students annually participate in art-making classes.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park and The Architectural League of New York.

The Parking Meters Project consists of five decommissioned parking meters, each outfitted with a small diorama, installed in Rockaway Park. The meters are installed at the eastern end of the parking lot between Beach 94th Street and Cross Bay Boulevard. Conrad Stojak works with obsolete New York parking meters, many of which can be found out on the city streets and in warehouses, by upcycling them into public works of art. Each one is an individualistic, self-contained micro-world depicting New York City scenes in the form of urban dioramas that are community specific, including a miniature Whalemina sculpture, which was destroyed during Hurricane Sandy.

Queens Creative Solidarity: Flushing Meadows Corona Park: What It’s Worthis the fourth residency of the Studio in the Park program at the Queens Museum. Flushing Meadows Corona Park: What It’s Worth is focused on engaging local artists and community organizations who are interested in the topic of equitable access to, and preservation of, Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The community is invited to collaborate on a collective art action based on that shared interest through a series of open art activities involving various media, sound, and technology. These activities will explore important park issues identified by local community leaders. As a shared community resource, Flushing Meadows Corona Park is a living example of a space that can be best preserved if varied communities come together to recognize its value.

The Studio in the Park residency takes place in a 150 square foot purpose-built mobile studio situated adjacent to the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. This exhibition is presented by ArtBuilt and the Queens Museum. For more information about programming and hours, please visit queensmuseum.org/events.

Shadow Migration exhibits animal silhouettes cut from steel plates and installed throughout the park. Klemperer investigates animal populations that were threatened in the 20th century, but are now rebounding and showing up in “our backyard.” Wild animals are finding their way into suburban and urban environments as human populations sprawl into their natural habitats. While many species have been devastated, some are adapting and thriving on the largesse of urban life. Hawks dive from high rise cornices to feast on the rich urban population of pigeons and rats; bears walk through New Jersey neighborhoods; and just several blocks from Court Square Park, a coyote found its way to a rooftop in Long Island City.

Klemperer’s animal silhouettes are steel forms, punctuated with cutouts in the shape of countries from around the world. Each animal is a melting pot, bearing countries on its body that are also represented in Queens’ population—the most diverse community in the world.

This exhibition was made possible by the Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award.

Created in 1986, Unfurling is Mary Ann Unger’s first artwork to be displayed with NYC Parks. Unger exhibited her work at both MoMA PS 1 and SculptureCenter during her lifetime, bringing her work full circle as it is installed adjacent to these Long Island City institutions. Unfurling reveals the dichotomy the artist was known for in her public artworks: geometric, architectural forms crafted with strong, organic, man–made materials. Inspired by nature, her curvilinear aluminum works allow an interplay between weight and weightlessness, between mathematical structure and airy transparency. These works are contemplative, inviting, and offer an opportunity for nature and the urban environment to collaborate. This work was rendered in an intimate scale and is elevated to the viewer’s eye–level by a plinth. Unger had envisioned Unfurling as a larger piece, in keeping with her other life–size public works; however, a larger version of this piece was not realized in her lifetime.

This exhibition is presented by Mary Ann Unger Estate and Maxwell Davidson Gallery.

Meridian (Gold) by Mika Tajima is an illuminated plume of water vapor whose color shifts between magenta and pale cyan. The color of the vapor corresponds in real-time to the global sentiment for gold, reflected in the price fluctuation of the commodity. Gold is a peculiar material that derives its value from the social perception of its qualities and collective "moods" toward geopolitical and economic events. The framing structure for Meridian (Gold) is a seating zone that references communal rejuvenation spas and here becomes a site to reflect on the fleeting materiality of contemporary life. The project was selected by participants in Public Process, SculptureCenter’s intensive program for high school students that uses New York City’s rich public art landscape to explore the history and impact of public art and its community influence.

Public Process is an intensive program for high school students that uses New York City’s rich public art landscape to explore the history and impact of public art and its community influence. In July 2015, eight high school students participated in a two-week course providing interactions and presentations by seasoned professional curators, architects, local historians, and public art organization representatives, and opportunities to visit public art sites. Three artists were invited to make proposals for a public artwork in Long Island City and presented them to the students in their studios. On the last day of the course, the students made presentations and debated the proposals, ultimately selecting Tajima’s project for the commission.

This exhibition is presented by SculptureCenter.