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Winter 2008: Metalcraft Magazine "Art sprouts where industries Decline" by Nestor Gula

View article from Winter 2008 issue: Metalcraft Article

November 11, 2007: Bradenton Herald By ROBERTA C. NELSON

"Sculptures Brighten Sarasota Skyline"

Monumental works of art reach to the sky and hold the ground in an outdoor exhibit that opens Sunday on Sarasota's bayfront.

Sarasota Season of Sculpture, with more than two dozen pieces, stretches along North Tamiami Trail with works by nationally and internationally acclaimed artists as well as noted local and regional artists. The exhibit, the fourth biennial event sponsored by Season of Sculpture, runs to May 26.

"It's quite an exciting time," said Brenda Terris, executive director of Sarasota Season of Sculpture.

In an interview last week, Terris awaited the arrival of "Dance," a sculpture made from 12 cars by American artist Dustin Shuler. The piece was installed just outside One Sarasota Tower at 2 N. Tamiami Trail.

Also scheduled to arrive was "Star Pointer" by John Henry, also an American artist. The work is 70 feet tall.

"That is three times the size of 'Unconditional Surrender,' " Terris said, referring to the controversial work by J. Seward Johnson Jr. depicting the famous "V-J Day Kiss in Times Square," a World War II-era photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt.

The 25-foot tall statue, which was placed in Times Square to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, was part of Season Three of Sarasota Season of Sculpture.

Passionate reaction to Johnson's "Unconditional Surrender" ranged from couples who identified with the figures and wanted their picture taken beneath the statue, to anti-war protesters who marked it with graffiti, to a citizens movement's objection to it for aesthetic reasons. "Unconditional Surrender" is currently on exhibit at the Port of San Diego until February 2008.

Terris hopes Season Four will provoke as an intense community discussion about public art.

"Whatever you think about a piece is fine," Terris said. "The point is we want you to feel passionate about your perspective on art. There is something for everyone in this exhibition."

Some artists are returning, such as Jorge Blanco, a Venezuelan-born sculptor who now lives in Sarasota. Christine Desiree, a Ringling College graduate and creator of "High Voltage" returns with a work entitled "Pulse." Gillian Christy, an artist from Iowa who has achieved prominence before her 30th birthday, exhibits "American Dream." Philip Jackson, an international artist who was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth II as Royal Sculptor for Windsor Great Park, has two pieces in the show, "Serenissima" and "Moon Struck."

For the first time, the Season of Sculpture has partnered with Ringling Museum of Art, and will exhibit one work off the bayfront on the Ringling property. "Louis Armstrong," a work by the late Niki De Saint Phalle created in 1999, is inside the gate at the entrance to the John M. McKay Visitor Pavilion.

"Louis Armstrong," approximately nine feet tall, depicts the famous musician in polyfoam, resin, steel, and even stained glass, mirrored glass, stones and gold lead.

"The materials are such that a higher level of surveillance would be prudent," said Stephen D. Borys, the Ulla Searing Curator of Collections at the Ringling, who helped coordinate the installation.

" 'Louis Armstrong' is adjacent to the Historic Asolo Theater, and it's an energetic piece," Borys said. "It will be the first thing you see."

Borys said the Ringling is "delighted" to collaborate with Season of Sculpture, which brings a lot of excitement to Sarasota.

"This show will be almost precedent setting, and we are delighted to partner with them," he said.

Another first for the Season of Sculpture are ATM-type map dispensing machines, one at the entrance to Marina Jack's and the other at the northern end of the exhibit. The machines, purchased with a grant from the Roberta Leventhal Sudakoff Foundation, will provide a free map of the exhibit in exchange for the visitor's zip code and number of people in the party. The machines will also be capable of taking donations via debit card or credit card.

A symposium on public art is held as part of Season Four of the Season of Sculpture, March 7-9. The panel includes E. John Bullard, Director, New Orleans Museum of Art; Valerie Fletcher, Senior Curator of Modern Sculpture and Painting, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Washington, D.C.; and Jeffrey Grove, Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Admission to the symposium is free.

For more information about the symposium and the exhibit, log on to the Web site, Sarasota Season of Sculpture.

Roberta C. Nelson, staff writer, can be reached at 748-0411, ext 2121.

Artists represented in Season of Sculpture, Season Four

What: Sarasota Season of Sculpture, an outdoor exhibit of monumental sculpture by local, regional, national and international artists

When: Today through May 26. A public ribbon-cutting ceremony is 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

Where: Bayfront in downtown Sarasota

Admission: Free. Maps of the exhibit are available free from two automated kiosks at Marina Jack's entrance and the north end of the exhibit

June 7, 2007: The Providence Journal by Bill Van Siclen

Smokestack sculpture watches over Olneyville

From the Providence Journal

Sometimes public art projects pop up where you least expect them. Certainly, that’s the case with The Smokestack, a new sculpture installation sponsored by Puente, a non-profit community development group based in Providence’s long-neglected but now-booming Olneyville neighborhood.

Designed by Providence sculptor Gillian Christy, The Smokestack sits atop a 70-foot-high industrial chimney overlooking Puente’s headquarters at 60 Valley St. Intended to represent Olneyville’s transformation from gritty factory area to vibrant residential district, the sculpture takes the form of a stainless steel vine which appears to be wrapping itself around the top of the chimney. Christy has also installed an 8-foot bronze grille on the rim of the chimney, giving the top of the sculpture an open, trellis-like look.

Puente executive director Brett Farberstein says that installation of The Smokestack is already about "85 percent done" and should be completed by mid-June. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held some time in July.

Dec 25-31, 2006: Providence Business News by Natalie Myers

From the Providence Business News

July 13, 2006: The Providence Journal by David Brussat

The smokestack as civic virtue

From the Providence Journal

How perfectly organic. A steel vine climbs up a brick smokestack. The smokestack rises from an old factory newly renamed The Plant, amid the detritus of the flower of the city's former industrial wealth. The smokestack says: The community will rise again, and the people will flourish.

Simple, yet meaningful. Symbolism doesn’t get much better than that. Neither does public art.

The only major smokestack that remains at the former Providence Dyeing, Bleaching & Calendaring Co. (c. 1843), on Valley Street, in Olneyville, was clobbered by a storm in the 1990s, toppling all but 60 feet of stack. The factory had preceded the stack into hard times decades before, along with much of the rest of industrial Providence. The city's decline during the middle of the 20th Century dragged Olneyville down. Once a robust mix of mills, mill workers and shops serving mill workers, it is now considered the poorest district in town.

Last year, Providence artist Gillian Christy took the job of falling in love with the unhappy smokestack. Well, perhaps that’s too romantic a description of applying for a grant to turn the crippled relic into a work of art as part of a mill-rehab venture. The Plant is a mixture of artist live/work lofts and galleries being developed by the community nonprofit group Puente and mill-rehabilitation specialist Struever Bros., Eccles & Rouse, of Baltimore. Nevertheless, the Davenport, Iowa, native has turned the stack's rehabilitation into a labor of love, into which she has drawn the local community.

Yesterday, at the Peerless Lofts, in downtown, a fundraiser was held to encourage the part of the local community with money to spend $30 to $360 for the greater good, or at any rate to metaphorically buy a brick for the stack. (“Bricks” are still available. Contact Puente at 401/454-3570.)

Another part of the community, even more local, was drawn even more intimately into the project by Christy. She taught a metalworking course at the Steel Yard, a nonprofit in the Promenade District that offers arts and technical training, and incubates artful businesses. She invited a class from the Met School and a group of neighborhood residents to fabricate the stainless-steel leaves that are to be attached to the vine that snakes up the smokestack.

When the vine reaches the lip of the remaining part of the smokestack, it will rise 10 feet farther to embrace an extension of the stack in bronze, which will replicate the grout pattern of the stack’s original brickwork. In short, the old will be new, linked by nature in the form of the vine. Thus will the community hold hands across the bridge to the future of the city. (“Puente” means bridge in Spanish.)

The actual implantation of the art atop the smokestack should be an entertaining affair when it occurs, possibly in September. Turning it into a party might help further bridge relations between The Plant’s proponents and the community.

The Smokestack symbolizes the continuing rebirth of Olneyville. Some criticize “gentrification,” but if poor neighborhoods are left to fester, that is criticized, too. Yet The Plant, the Steel Yard, Puente, Struever Bros., the Armory Revival Co. and others – including a growing set of nonprofits building affordable (and attractive!) housing – seem to be trying to bridge the gap between revitalization and stagnation without alienating even those who insist upon – indeed, revel in – their alienation.

It isn’t easy, and it seems that no good deed goes unpunished. The symbol of community emerging from The Smokestack cannot come too soon.

Readers may not realize they are familiar with the work of Gillian Christy. Her Winding Walk sits near the ice rink downtown. A column of stainless steel nine feet tall with a tiny staircase winding up its length, eventually reaching a room with shutters thrown open, revealing a boat, Winding Walk has that legible whimsicality that charms passersby who, I would guess, are merely baffled by other nearby sculpture. Take, for example, the several sculptures formed (?) of oddly shaped metal pieces, signifying (apparently) nothing. If more civic sculpture were of the Winding Walk school, and less of it were of the Junk Thrown Together by Children school, public art would not be such an easy target.