Art in the Parks

Description:

Marking Socrates Sculpture Park’s 30th anniversary this year, the institution presents LANDMARK, a series of artist commissions and projects that transforms the land both physically and symbolically. Once an industrial landfill and illegal dumping ground, Socrates has transformed itself into New York City’s preeminent sculpture park and social space for public art, community engagement and urban discovery. LANDMARK directly addresses the idea of place as intimately tied to social and ecological structures, to maintenance and stewardship, and to evolution over time.

LANDMARK features eight different artist projects including a newly commissioned major earthwork by Meg Webster. Additional artists in the exhibition include Abigail DeVille, Brendan Fernandes, Cary Leibowitz, Jonathan Odom, Jessica Segall, Casey Tang, the curatorial collective ARTPORT_making waves, and a Broadway Billboard by Hank Willis Thomas. Since its inception in 1986, Socrates and the surrounding area of Queens, New York has rapidly changed. Whether by engaging directly with the land or commenting on the neighborhood’s cultural and economic shifts, each artwork in LANDMARK reflects historic transformations in the making.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park.

Description:

Chance Ecologies: Flushing River is the third residency of the Studio in the Park program at the Queens Museum. Led by curators Catherine Grau and Nathan Kensinger, this project will create an in-depth exploration of the entirety of the Flushing River during a six-week residency, using the mobile studio as a research hub and community engagement space. Artists from Chance Ecologies will engage in a series of week-long mini residencies at the studio space, and lead weekly public events based out of the studio, which will include performative walks, ecological field trips, canoe paddles, and historic and scientific investigations connecting the source of the Flushing River in the park to its mouth in the Flushing Bay.

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. The activities of Chance Ecologies will accumulate into an evolving archive of artistic research that will be visually represented both inside and outside the mobile studio, and will be accessible to visitors during regular daytime hours. Chance Ecologies: Flushing River will culminate in a daylong series of public events centered around the studio space, a publication of the research realized during the residency, and the exhibition of resulting new works at the Queens Museum in October.

This exhibition is presented by ArtBuilt and the Queens Museum. For more information about programming and hours, please visit queensmuseum.org/events.

Description:

The Rockaway Barrier Beautification Project is the longest mural in New York City, covering a 1.5 mile stretch of road along the beach in Rockaway, Queens. NYC Parks invited artists and designers to envision the surface of these ordinary barriers as canvases for art. Members of the community helped to select the top three designs that grace the surface of these barriers and paint the murals.

This project was made possible thanks to a partnership between NYC Parks and the NYC Department of Transportation, the Community Affairs Unit (CAU) of the Office of the Mayor, NYC Service, and community groups, including the Rockaway Beach Civic Association, Rockaway Artists Alliance, and Friends of Rockaway Beach. Benjamin Moore generously donated 420 gallons of paint to the MayorâΑΑs Fund to Advance New York City for this initiative.

Jade Chan's design for the Rockaway barriers is titled In Flight. When she visited Rockaway Beach, she was inspired by the warmth, the sun and the colors that jumped out at her from the sky, water and sand. The sound of the surf and the breeze upon her skin was exhilarating. She observed the birds in flight and was inspired by this free and liberating vision. Chan sees In Flight as a representation of the freedom and strength of the human spirit.

Learn more about the Rockaway Barrier Beautification Project.

Description:

The Rockaway Barrier Beautification Project is the longest mural in New York City, covering a 1.5 mile stretch of road along the beach in Rockaway, Queens. NYC Parks invited artists and designers to envision the surface of these ordinary barriers as canvases for art. Members of the community helped to select the top three designs that grace the surface of these barriers and paint the murals.

This project was made possible thanks to a partnership between NYC Parks and the NYC Department of Transportation, the Community Affairs Unit (CAU) of the Office of the Mayor, NYC Service, and community groups, including the Rockaway Beach Civic Association, Rockaway Artists Alliance, and Friends of Rockaway Beach. Benjamin Moore generously donated 420 gallons of paint to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City for this initiative.

As an artist, Patty Harris has created animations of floods and is fascinated by the way water moves. Experienced in looking closely at the sea, she pulled a few simple forms that suggest the movement and pattern of a wave. For the Shore Parkway barrier, Patty painted shapes that express the undulating movement of a wave. She added curved shapes that hold water of a slightly different color—just as actual water displays a range of hues. To this rhythmical simple pattern, Harris included the silhouetted forms of surfers at the crests of the waves.

Learn more about the Rockaway Barrier Beautification Project.

Description:

The Rockaway Barrier Beautification Project is the longest mural in New York City, covering a 1.5 mile stretch of road along the beach in Rockaway, Queens. NYC Parks invited artists and designers to envision the surface of these ordinary barriers as canvases for art. Members of the community helped to select the top three designs that grace the surface of these barriers and paint the murals.

This project was made possible thanks to a partnership between NYC Parks and the NYC Department of Transportation, the Community Affairs Unit (CAU) of the Office of the Mayor, NYC Service, and community groups, including the Rockaway Beach Civic Association, Rockaway Artists Alliance, and Friends of Rockaway Beach. Benjamin Moore generously donated 420 gallons of paint to the MayorâΑΑs Fund to Advance New York City for this initiative.

As a surf regular of Rockaway Beach, John Garcia pays tribute to Rockaway BeachâΑΑs surf culture in his barrier mural. He has painted images of Rockaway surfers riding waves, along with the birds that often keep them company on the water and on the shore. These images of birds and surfers sit on top of an aquatic abstract backdrop that captures the mystery and beauty of the ocean. The barriers also include the text âΑΑWelcome to the RockawaysâΑ as an invitation for others to experience the waves and serenity of Rockaway Beach.

Learn more about the Rockaway Barrier Beautification Project.

Description:

Artist Fanny Allié raises awareness about homelessness in her public art installation A Bench for the Night. Her wooden bench is shaped in the silhouette of a sleeping person, a reminder that a public bench is a potential bed for some New Yorkers.  She is interested in personifying the bench while subtly referring to the dehumanization of people living on the streets.

A Bench for the Night is a continuation of Allié’s focus on this important social issue. In 2014 she took part in the Engaging Artists Residency organized by the Artist Volunteer Center and More Art, which primarily focused on homelessness. Engaging Artists encourages local artists to deepen their understanding of socially engaged art through volunteer opportunities and interactive workshops with professionals in the fields of fine art and activism. During this six–week program, participants were required to volunteer at least a half a day per week at a local charitable organization.

In 2013, Allié also exhibited the public artwork Serendipity in Tompkins Square Park. The sculpture was a life–size, steel silhouette of a formerly homeless man who spent much of his time in the park. Furthermore, A Bench for the Night is the continuation of her earlier neon sculpture The Glowing Homeless created in 2011 for Bring to Light: Nuit Blanche New York in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The Glowing Homeless was a neon outline of a human form that rested on a park bench. By rendering the homeless person in neon light asleep amongst the park’s crowds she created an alluring object using an attractive material that reversed the normal reaction of avoidance and instead drew people towards the form on the bench. Allié’s new A Bench For the Night will invite the audience to sit on the bench, an interaction between the public and the artwork that was not possible with The Glowing Homeless.

While A Bench For a Night primarily alludes to homelessness, the piece also reflects one’s desire to seek an isolated place to rest and remove oneself from the continuous movement of the city. When preparing for this exhibit, Allié noticed a lack of seating in the immediate vicinity. By placing the bench–sculpture in this small plaza, she has created a new social space that simultaneously raises awareness on homelessness among the general public, as well as artists and art–lovers visiting MoMA PS1 located across the street.

Description:

Fifteen years ago Socrates Sculpture Park inaugurated the Emerging Artist Fellowship (EAF) Exhibition and launched what would become an annual exhibition of “artists to watch.” By providing an open studio along with financial, administrative, and technical support, the EAF program offers a rare opportunity for the realization of original, large–scale complex work. From May through September EAF artists work on–site, negotiating the physical and conceptual challenges of production in the park’s outdoor studio space, becoming energetic fuel for the park’s popular summer programming.

This year’s Emerging Artist Fellows were selected through a highly competitive process that attracted over 350 applications, a record number for the program, by the park’s 2015 Curatorial Advisors, Gary Carrion–Murayari (Curator, New Museum) and Nora Lawrence (Curator, Storm King Art Center). The 2015 Emerging Artist Fellows are: Kenseth Armstead, Charlotte Becket & Roger Sayre, José Carlos Casado, Torkwase Dyson, Carla Edwards, Davey Hawkins, Lena Henke, David Horvitz, Charlotte Hyzy, Melanie McLain, Kirsten Nelson, Freya Powell, Leah Raintree, Aaron Suggs, and Noa Younse.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park.

Description:

Socrates’ latest “Broadway Billboard” is by artist Duke Riley and is titled El Primero Desfile de San Patricio en la Habana, Cuba, or, The First St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Havana, Cuba.

St. Patrick’s Day marks the celebration of the life of the patron saint of Ireland and is observed by people of Irish descent around the world. But, as Riley states, “the tradition of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is entirely American.” The first parade in honor of St. Patrick’s Day was organized by Irishmen serving in the British army stationed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1737. It began as nothing more than drunken revelry, singing, and a shared sense of homesickness. 200 years later the tradition was adopted in Ireland and today there are St. Patrick’s Day parades in 15 nations across six continents.

During a 2007 visit to Havana, Riley discovered that his Irish roots had Cuban connections. In fact, one of of the city’s main streets is called Calle O’Reilly, named for Alejandro O’Reilly, an Irishman and early abolitionist who served as a general in the Spanish army in 18th–century Cuba and later served as governor of Spanish–occupied Louisiana. Like O’Reilly, many Irish settled in Cuba in the 18th and 19th centuries, leaving a legacy of prominent historical figures of Irish–Cuban descent and there are still a great number of current day Cuban residents with Irish heritage.

With this history in mind, Duke Riley returned to Cuba in 2009 to stage the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Havana, a performance for ‘Chelsea Visits Havana’ at Museum Nacional de Bellas Artes as part of the Havana Biennial. The Broadway Billboard on view at Socrates Sculpture Park consists of a section of a larger drawing the artist did as a record of his 2009 performance, along with representations of iconic American cartoon characters marching through the streets of Havana.

Like the first parades in America, Riley’s St. Patrick’s Day performance reminded participants of the positive potentials of social inclusion and cultural exchange from the earliest parades and commemorations. Riley’s 2009 parade displayed a romanticized vision of a distant land – Ireland, Cuba, and America – separated by the sea. With today’s warming of relations between historically cool American and Cuban governments, El Primero Desfile de San Patricio en la Habana, Cuba presciently experiments with the merging of the two cultures.

This exhibition is presented by Socrates Sculpture Park

Description:

To draw a Contemporary Art forum is to separate from both modern and historical perspectives, to immerse oneself in current time and space. A meeting point in the processing time from past and to the future. We might call it the “moment;” it is short and creative. It entails catching an idea when it appears like a flash of light. It can — and must — disappear in the next femtosecond. A “moment” can mean a minute portion of time, or the product of quantity (as a force) and the distance to a particular point. THE MOMENT in contemporary art can be ideally a philosophical term and scientific necessity.

In 2015, the Taiwanese American Arts Council takes THE MOMENT as a theme, and develops it to a series of multi–disciplinary programs taking place in various venues. The traditional format of painting shares space with the latest interactive technology. These are threads expressing multiple directions, meeting in this MOMENT. The MOMENT investigates the play of the virtual and the real, inward and outward, our intimate reflection on a surface, dark and light, or a view of self in the outside environment. The Moment visualizes a picture, an object, a location, a person, or a fanciful collective memory of how we evolved as creatures. We are about to investigates the artist’s relation to society and himself.

Artists on view in Flushing Meadows Corona Park as part of THE MOMENT include Ya-Hon Chang, Tang-Wei Hsu, Kuang-Yu Lee, Wen-Fu Yu.

This exhibition is presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei and the Taiwanese American Arts Council

Description:

Tree Reflections is a series of clay tiles cast from two Osage Orange trees combined with mosaic pieces that tells the story of two parks. The main components of this artwork are cast from an Osage Orange tree in Marcus Garvey Park near the artist’s home in Harlem. After visiting Conference House Park, Stair cast four clay extensions from the Osage Orange tree there, which were added to the existing artwork. Stair’s aims to create portraits of trees through her work. The clay that she presses onto living trees records their species, age, and strength. She was particularly attracted to the trees’ remarkable patterns, bending forms, and endurance, physical qualities that demonstrate the unique historical importance of this species.

An additional exhibition of Stair’s work in the Conference House Park Visitor Center’s Lenape Gallery will open on November 25 as part of Native American Heritage month.