See Completed Summer Sculptures at Socrates Park This Weekend

Every summer artists are hard at work in Socrates Sculpture Park producing work for the Fall exhibit. They are part of the Park’s Annual Fellowship Program, an artist residency that offers 15 creators the opportunity to create and install sculptures for the Park. Recipients are awarded a $5,000 production grant and five months of access to the resources in the Park’s outdoor studio.

Participants often draw inspiration from the park’s landscape and history, and this year many examined the “authorship and visibility, the re-contextualization of domestic motifs, and the examination of biological material, among many others.”

You can see examples of the work below, and stop by the exhibition opening this Saturday, October 5 from 4-6 p.m.

In addition to viewing the newly installed pieces, there will be a dance performance by Sandra Soto and accompanied by violinist Sita Chay, based on the ‘Danza de los Viejitos’ (Dance of the Little Old Men) from the Purépecha region in Michoacán, Mexico. There will also be Colombian food available for purchase during the opening from vendor, My Carretta.

I STILL REMEMBER YOU MIJO (VOTIVE VELA)
Metal, wood, resin, fiberglass, and thermachromic pigment
In response to the recent and ongoing targeting of Latinx communities in the United States, Jesus Benavente has produced ‘I Still Remember You Mijo (Votive Vela).’ From one perspective the work spells out this mournful sentiment in florid type bracketed by wings, while from other angles the piece is abstract. Topped with thermochromic paint that changes color with temperature the piece is evocative of votive candles often lit for lost loved ones.

HONORING THE PEOPLE OF SEWANHAKY
Wampum, wood, chicken wire, green pigment, cement, nails, foam, abolone, glass
Tecumseh Ceaser (NativeTec)‘s homage to the original inhabitants of the territory that encompasses Queens, Long Island and Brooklyn is titled ‘Honoring the People of Sewanhaky,’ which translates to the island of black shells. The concrete and wampum sculpture depicts a sea turtle with thirteen facets on its shell, representing the indigenous groups of the region at the time of European colonization, and references the creation story that North America emerged from a turtle’s back.

YARD SHADOW: NOKIA & YARD SHADOW: SAMSUNG
Steel and enamel paint
Paul Kopkau’s ‘Yard Shadow: Nokia’ & ‘Yard Shadow: Samsung’ appropriate the commonplace black silhouette form of the suburban lawn ornament. By utilizing graphics of generational and visual technology—the early graphic brick mobile and the sleek smartphone—and scaling-up these quaint decorative structures, Kopkau highlights the increasing mediation of everyday life.

ACCESS GROVE, SOFT STAND
Red velvet, polyfill, soil, seeds, found steel stanchions, and brass snap hooks
For ‘Access Grove, Soft Stand,’ Gabriela Salazar weaves, drapes, and wraps velvet rope, the ubiquitous crowd controller and VIP separator, in Socrates’ central grove of trees. The red rope simultaneously blocks, guides, and perhaps confounds visitors, whose bodies are shaped by urbanism and architecture, while passing through this public space. Salazar’s contorting and winding of the rope combined with the wild plants sprouting from the porous textile undermine the authority of this dividing line.

One Comment

Jill October 4th, 2019

Just moved in across the street from the park. It’s been exciting to watch the progress and process of the sculptures as they’ve been created and installed.

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