Tag: Art

Prospect Park 150: The Connective Project On View July 7-17

July 6, 2017

Prospect Park Alliance, AREA4 and Architect Suchi Reddy Present 150th Anniversary Public Art Installation Bringing Together Diverse Communities that Love Prospect Park

Add your pinwheel to the display during our free, pinwheel-making workshops Thursdays + Fridays from 4-8 pm, and Saturdays + Sundays from 2-6 pm. View our online gallery and learn more about the project!

Prospect Park Alliance, AREA4 and Suchi Reddy of Reddymade Architecture & Design debut a large-scale public art installation in Prospect Park on the occasion of the Park’s 150th Anniversary.

On view July 7-17 2017, The Connective Project transforms Prospect Park’s Rose Garden—a little-known landscape in the Park’s northeast corner—into an immersive, engaging and ever-growing display. The installation features artwork, photographs, verse and prose submitted by emerging artists, notable Brooklynites and the diverse communities that consider the Park “Brooklyn’s Backyard.” During the installation, the public will be invited to take part in making additional pinwheels to add to the display during select hours.

“Prospect Park Alliance is thrilled to be working with the team at AREA4 and Suchi Reddy on this whimsical and dynamic public installation,” said Sue Donoghue, president of Prospect Park Alliance. “When we set out to plan our major events celebrating the Park’s 150th, our key goal was the engage the community in the celebration, which The Connective Project achieves in a beautiful and innovative way.”

Background on the Connective Project

 The Connective Project is composed of more than 7,000 individually designed pinwheels, printed with work submitted by the public. The installation creates an evolving, undulating wave of color and beauty that blankets the two-and-half acre plot, which is the focus of future restoration by the Alliance. Reddy chose pinwheels because they are universally loved objects of childhood memories, much like public parks, and evoke nature in their movement attuned to wind and natural forces.

“Our inspiration behind the Connective Project was to bring together the broader Brooklyn community with the Park in a unique way at the level the 150th anniversary deserves,” said Rory McEvoy, president of AREA4. “This is an elegant and inclusive way for people to add their unique voice to a collective undertaking: a reflection of the Park’s usage and the Alliance’s care of it.”

The installation was conceived as an architectural form that would immerse and engage the community,” said Reddy, who has long been an advocate of architecture for the people. “Architecture is accessible and tangible and easily translatable. We wanted to create something that would initiate a dialogue about the importance of public spaces, which we feel is so important right now, but also something that generates wonder and play.”

Reddy’s vision was very much influenced by the beauty and vision of Prospect Park’s designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who in 1867 transformed 585 acres of rural terrain into the urban retreat that is Brooklyn’s Backyard. Now 150 years later, the Rose Garden will be experienced again in grand fashion, full of color and whimsy, a nod to the creative spirit that pervades Brooklyn and Reddy’s practice.

The pinwheels are constructed of weather-resistant, compostable paper made from stone dust. The community engagement process began with an open call to artists to submit works for a chance to be selected by a panel, consisting of representatives from the Brooklyn Council of the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, BRIC Arts & Media, PIONEER WORKS, MoCADA, and Russell Simmons’ Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.

Artist Ansel Oommen was selected as the winner of the open call. Prints of his piece, Chitin & Furanocoumarin, will be on sale in the Brooklyn Museum gift shop during the installation, along with works by the top ten finalists. Pioneer Works will be featuring the winning artist’s work as well as displaying the pinwheels of the top ten finalists and 20 runners up as part of their Second Sundays event taking place on August 13th. This event will also feature pinwheel making in the Pioneer Works’ garden.

The Connective Project is funded in part by Bloomberg Philanthropies, with additional support from NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital and GSB Digital.

Monument to the Unelected

October 5, 2016

NYC Parks, together with the Prospect Park Alliance and Historic House Trust, is pleased to welcome Nina Katchadourian’s Monument to the Unelected to Prospect Park’s Lefferts Historic House. This temporary installation, consisting of 58 signs bearing the names of the losing candidates from every presidential election in American history, will be on view from November 5 through 13, 2016, on the house’s lawn facing Flatbush Avenue. The installation coincides with this year’s presidential election, and once the results are official, it will eventually include a sign with the name of the loser of the 2016 Presidential Election. The Alliance will present a mock election and programming for youth at the house on Election Day.  

Katchadourian was originally commissioned by the Scottsdale Museum of Art to create a new work around the time of the 2008 presidential election and became interested in the plastic election signs sprouting up on front lawns, in vacant lots, and at busy intersections around Scottsdale, Arizona. She points out that “these markers tend to crop up in the weeks leading up to an election, after which they disappear, with some of the names going on to take office and others being largely forgotten.” The signs also struck her as an American tradition of sorts and with an aesthetic all their own.

Working with designer Evan Gaffney, Katchadourian created a series of signs bearing the names of every person who ever ran for president and lost. Each sign was made in a contemporary design vernacular, even if it advertised a candidate from a previous century. None of the signs are designs that were used in the candidates’ actual election campaigns. Many of the signs borrow directly from the designs of signs that she documented in Scottsdale; others were modeled on signs seen in other parts of the country. All the signs are printed on corrugated plastic using similar commercial production methods as common election signage.

This project is supported by the Historic House Trust’s Contemporary Art Partnerships program and the New York State Council on the Arts. 

Art in the Park: Art Slope

August 30, 2016

Prospect Park Alliance is partnering with the Park Slope Civic Council to bring a new multi-arts festival to Park Slope. Taking place over nine days, from September 17 through September 25, Art Slope will unite artists from all over Brooklyn as they display their work, which speaks to issues such as sustainability, politics and social happenings.

In cooperation with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, ten installations will be in Prospect Park. With works ranging from sculpture to painting, film to performance art, live music and sound installations, all kinds of art will be available to interact with and learn from throughout Park Slope.

The festival will kick off with a “Wearable Art Walk” at Washington Park on September 17 at noon. Artist Maria de Los Angeles has created a line of wearable paper dresses reflecting social, historical, and political issues affecting the children of undocumented immigrants, which she will wear and discuss on the catwalk.

Art Slope events are free and open to all ages. Please visit artslope.nyc for more information.

PPA Profiles: Carole Eisner

August 18, 2016

Carole Eisner, the award-winning artist behind this year’s popular Art in the Parks exhibition, has shown her sculptures all over the world. Her monumental works—created from I-beams twisted into lyrical forms—have graced public spaces from Albany to Asia, and this spring landed in Brooklyn.

Four of Eisner’s sculptures are placed around the Park and can be found at Grand Army Plaza, Litchfield Villa, Bartel-Pritchard Square and the Peninsula. Ranging from six to 17 feet tall, the sculptures are intended to evoke line drawings, and are simultaneously playfully light and solidly industrial. In Eisner’s mind, the works do not represent nature, but are intended to complement it.

Growing up near Joyce Killmer Park in the Bronx, Eisner was always drawn to art. She received a Mademoiselle Award for Fashion Design in 1961, and worked as a fashion designer before establishing a painting career. Throughout her life, Eisner has continued to explore new mediums and fabrication methods. She became interested in the possibilities of I-beams while working with a steel manufacturer in Connecticut, and has spent the last decade constructing sculptures like those found around the Park.

Upon being invited to display her work in Prospect Park, Eisner chose locations for each sculpture in conjunction with NYC Parks and the Prospect Park Alliance. Each piece reflects its location, and highlights the flow and beauty of the natural landscape.

These popular works will be on display until May 2017, and park visitors have already taken a shine to them. To Eisner, this is just how it should be. The works are meant to be in nature, and she believes they are enlivened by the people around them.

Eisner and her daughter work together at the gallery Susan Eley Fine Art. To celebrate the Prospect Park installation, the two will host free tours of the Park on September 20 at 11 am and 1 pm (with a rain date of September 27). RSVPs are required in advance, please contact Susan Eley Fine Art. 

Art in the Park: Carole Eisner

May 20, 2016

In partnership with NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks project, the Prospect Park Alliance is proud to present a public exhibition of sculpture by award-winning artist Carole Eisner. Four monumental works, created from I-beams twisted into elegant forms, will be on display through 2016.

“The Prospect Park Alliance has a long history of partnering with NYC Parks to present public art, because of the important role art plays in engaging communities and enhancing the Park, which is the heart of our mission”, said Sue Donoghue, President of the Prospect Park Alliance. “The landscapes selected for this exhibition are ideally suited to the elegance and fluidity of Carole Eisner’s work, and we look forward to debuting them in the Park.”

The works beacon visitors to key sites throughout the Park, that were chosen to highlight how art can complement the natural landscape. The sculptures range from six to seventeen feet tall, and can be found at Grand Army Plaza, Litchfield Villa, Bartel-Pritchard Square and the Prospect Park Peninsula. Visit our events calendar for information about where to find each of the sculptures.