Art in the Parks

The Writing on the Wall, a collaboration between Hank Willis Thomas and Dr. Baz Dreisinger with Openbox and designed by MASS Design Group, is a traveling installation composed of essays, poems, letters, stories, diagrams, and notes written by individuals in prison around the world. Emulating a prison cell, The Writing on the Wall recreates these largely unseen spaces in a public sphere. The installation’s design references the palimpsest-like writing on the walls of prison cells and layers these onto acrylic panels arranged in modules. The arrangement of the installation is based on measurements of cell blocks so that visitors can be fully immersed in the written and typed words of the incarcerated. The writings were accrued, with the authors’ permission, by Dr. Dreisinger during her years teaching in US and international prisons. As a presentation of the crisis of global criminal justice systems, these letters visually convey the narratives, thoughts, and emotions of the people behind bars.

This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line. 

Estructuras Monumentales is the first major exhibition of outdoor sculptures by New York-based artist Carmen Herrera. She has created vibrant, abstract paintings for more than 70 years, but has only recently received her well-deserved art historical recognition. Herrera’s radiant compositions simplify dynamically juxtaposed forms to their purest elements of color and geometry, creating a distinctive and iconic clarity by emphasizing what she sees as “the beauty of the straight line.”

Herrera’s Estructuras series of sculptures are even less well known. Informed by her architectural training, Herrera began the series in the 1960s with a group of diagrammatic sketches. She envisioned large-scale monochromatic sculptures that would extend the experience of her luminous paintings into three dimensions. Until recently, these historic proposals have remained unrealized. With Estructuras Monumentales, this remarkable artist is now able to share her powerful structures with public audiences for the first time.

This exhibition is presented by Public Art Fund.

New Monuments for New Cities is the inaugural project of the High Line Network Joint Art Initiative, a new collaboration between infrastructure reuse projects in North America. For the exhibition, five urban reuse projects that are part of the High Line Network invited five of their local artists or artist groups to create proposals (in the form of posters) for new monuments, both possible and impossible to build, that question the format itself and envision its future. The exhibition opens in New York after traveling to Houston, Austin, Chicago, and Toronto throughout 2019.

Participating artists include: Regina Agu, Nicole Awai, Judith Bernstein, Susan Blight, Daniela Cavazos Madrigal, Jamal Cyrus, Eric J. García, Guerrilla Girls, Coco Guzman, Hans Haacke, Tonika Johnson, Life of a Craphead (Amy Lam and Jon McCurley), An Te Liu, Teruko Nimura and Rachel Alex Crist, Chris Pappan, Denise Prince, Phillip Pyle, II, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Richard Santiago (TIAGO), Xaviera Simmons, Sin Huellas artists: Delilah Montoya and Jimmy Castillo, Zissou Tasseff-Elenkoff, Vincent Valdez, Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin, and Quentin VerCetty.

This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line. 

Mark Paul Deren, aka MADSTEEZ is known for his vivid, large-scale, multi-layered paintings, where strange and familiar figures are integrated into abstract landscapes. His artistic approach is influenced by being almost blind in one eye, where he sees only abstractions and lines of colors, most notably reds, purples, and oranges, which appear frequently in his work.

This exhibition is presented by Mountain Dew. 

The title of this new site-specific work is inspired by writer and activist Maya Angelou’s groundbreaking 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and reflects the artist’s deep respect for the black female experience and the personal connection to Angelou he found while reading her life story. Created out of 150 archival printed aluminum morphed into unique sculptures, no two individual pieces are the same. The sculpture becomes interactive when another dimension is revealed with an augmented reality app, which can be called up using a QR code posted on nearby signage.

This exhibition is presented by the Marcus Garvey Park Alliance Public Art Initiative with funding from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Additional funding provided by the Harlem Community Development Corporation, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Council Member Bill Perkins. Additional support provided by Materials for the Arts.

Peaceful Perch is a figurative bust-like sculpture: resonating as female, sitting elevated as an honored monument of watchfulness. The sculpture embodies the ubiquitous presence of race and the female form celebrating women of color, their unique features and hair: reflected within the neighborhoods of Harlem. Kim Dacres utilizes recycled motorcycle tires, layering them to reinterpret the features and hair of a woman, reimagined and accented with gold paint and enamel. By collaborating with artist Daniel Matthews, Dacres elevates the bust so that she sits as an honored monument of watchfulness.

This exhibition is presented by the Marcus Garvey Park Alliance Public Art Initiative. Additional funding provided by the Harlem Community Development Corporation, SWAB Reuse and Repair administered by Citizens Committee for New York City. Rubber materials were donated by Harlem Bolt Bike Shop.

Migrations spans the retaining walls that line the central walkway of Jacob H. Schiff Playground in Hamilton Heights. As part of the Audubon Mural Project, this mural raises awareness about birds that are impacted by climate change – in particular, the following four threatened species: Bank Swallow,  Common Redpoll, Northern Shoveler, and the White-faced Ibis.

Migrations was completed through a rich collaboration among volunteers of the Jacob H. Schiff Playground Neighborhood Association; Paid Youth Apprentices and Teaching Artist Jessie Novik with Creative Art Works; and The Audubon Mural Project/Gitler& Art Gallery.

With Tilted Head, parkgoers will encounter a 13-foot-tall androgynous, detached human head in classical repose, seemingly made of drying moldable clay, but actually cast in bronze. The archetypally minimalist head is mysteriously incomplete, missing a third or more of its form, and is accompanied by remnants of cast bronze objects that appear left behind as if the sculpture was abandoned in the studio, frozen in time. Tensions are evident throughout: the serenity of the face is countered by the disruption of the cracking surface, figurative representation veers towards abstraction of form. Timelessness and specificity meet, allowing viewers to project their own meaning and construct their own narratives about this colossal bodily fragment. Tilted Head is the artist’s largest single cast bronze sculpture to date and brings Mark Manders’ highly distinctive style to an outdoor exhibition in New York for the first time.

This exhibition is presented by Public Art Fund .

Folk Art on the Broadway Malls, a new initiative that is part of the Lincoln Square BID’s signature and ongoing Streetscape and Beautification program, is a community-based temporary public art project that will beautify the Broadway Malls between 60^th and 70^th streets.

Inspired by textile works from the American Folk Art Museum’s (AFAM) permanent collection, the Lincoln Square BID, AFAM and volunteers from New York Cares installed murals using stencils at seven Broadway Malls in the Lincoln Square BID’s boundaries, recreating works of art that represent the very best of the neighborhood. Mural locations include: 60^th street (the “gateway” to the Malls), 63^rd street (both sides), 64^th street (northern side), 67^th street (both sides), and 70^th street (south side, the BID’s northern boundary).

This exhibition is presented by the Lincoln Square BID and the American Folk Art Museum.

Viewfinding is a public art installation and queer poetry collaboration by New York-based artist Sarah E. Brook in Riverside Park South. It is a dimensional painting, interactive light sculpture, and a haven for private reflection. Brook’s sculptures and installations utilize translucency, layering, color gradients and architectural references to investigate the relationship between expansive external and internal (psychic) space, exploring how vastness can dismantle limiting narratives of being. Viewfinding consists of five wooden trapezoidal components, installed one behind the next and connected by a meandering bench that mimics the river nearby and interacts with the sun setting over the Hudson River. Strips of cast acrylic are fixed within each trapezoid, painted in gradations of color that progress from rich blue to fiery pink, referencing the color progression of a sky at sunset. On the bench are a series of 26 acrylic panels engraved with short works by queer poets—selected through an open call--on the theme of transformation and self-actualization.  Visible to viewers who engage closely with the work, the text will provide rich and varied entry points into the piece.

Contributing poets range from not-yet-published students to Lambda Literary Award winners (all poet bios on the project website).