Red, Yellow And Blue - Art Installation Made of 1.4 Million Feet of Nautical Rope at Madison Square Park

Brooklyn-based artist Orly Genger's largest and most ambitious art installation is now on display at Madison Square Park in midtown Manhattan. Genger's “Red, Yellow and Blue” is comprised of 1.4 million feet of hand-knotted nautical rope and 3,000 gallons of paint. The exhibit runs through September 8, 2013.

Leo Villareal's "Buckyball" Light Sculpture Animates Madison Square Park

video by lulanoff

Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Mad. Sq. Art unveiled a new light sculpture at Madison Square earlier this evening - Leo Villareal's "Buckyball." Largely inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller, Villareal’s BUCKYBALL applies concepts of geometry and mathematical relationships within a towering 30-foot tall, illuminated sculpture. feature two nested, geodesic sculptural spheres comprised of 180 LED tubes arranged in a series of pentagons and hexagons, known as a “Fullerene,” referring to the form’s discovery by Buckminster Fuller. Individual pixels located every 1.2 inches along the tubes are each capable of displaying 16 million distinct colors and will be specifically tuned by the artist’s own software, creating a subtle and sophisticated palette to enliven the Park. Relying on LED technologies driven by chance, BUCKYBALL’s light sequences will create exuberant, random compositions of varied speed, color, opacity, and scale. The site-specific work will remain on view daily from October 25, 2012 through February 1, 2013 in Madison Square Park.

Artist Leo Villareal states, “I am thrilled to be presenting BUCKYBALL in Madison Square Park. My new light sculpture takes the form of a Carbon 60 molecule and expands it to monumental scale. It also explores self-similarity through the use of two identical nested spheres, the outer at 20 feet in diameter and the inner at 10 feet. Lined with LED tubes, these structures are activated through sequenced light driven by custom software. This public artwork reinterprets many of the traditional elements found in the Park such as seating and historic monuments in a fresh and exciting way.”

Villareal received a BA in sculpture from Yale University in 1990, and a graduate degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program. (Information from Madison Square Park website).

2011 Big Apple Barbecue Block Party In Madison Square Park

The 9th Annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party takes place in Madison Square Park today and tomorrow (June 11-12, 2011, from 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM). The weekend-long event occurs every June and brings together the country’s top pitmasters who cook up their award-winning food, as well as musicians. The block party is set against the beautiful backdrop of Madison Square Park. 

Admission to the event is free. In addition to great food, visitors are treated to great live music, engaging seminars and cooking demonstrations for free. The country’s best barbecue is available from top pitmasters for only $8 per plate. Proceeds from the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party support the Madison Square Park Conservancy, the organization responsible for the beauty, ongoing maintenance, and programming of this historic park.

William Seward Statue at Madison Square Park

Located at the southwest corner of Madison Square Park, facing the intersection of Broadway and 23rd Street is the bronze statue of William Seward.

From the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation:

This imposing bronze statue of statesman William Seward (1801–1872) was created by the artist Randolph Rogers (1825–1892). The sculpture was dedicated in 1876, and Seward is said to be the first New Yorker to be honored with a monument in the city.

William Seward was born in Florida, New York, on May 16, 1801. An avid scholar, Seward studied at Farmers’ Hall Academy in Goshen, New York, and in 1816 enrolled at Union College, graduating in 1820. Seward was admitted to the bar at Utica in 1822, and partnered in Auburn, New York, with Elijah Miller. Active in local and national politics, Seward was elected in 1830 as an anti-Masonic candidate to the state senate. Defeated for governor by William L. Macy in 1834, Seward was elected to that position in 1838 as a leader of the anti-slavery wing of the Whig party, and served as governor for two terms, from 1839 to 1843. Afterwards Seward specialized in patent law, and was in great demand too as an attorney in criminal cases. In 1845, he argued in defense of freedom of the press in a libel suit brought by J. Fennimore Cooper (1789-1851) against newspaper publisher Horace Greeley (1811-1872) in 1845. Four years later, Seward was elected United States Senator (1849-1861).

Jaume Plensa's ECHO: A New Face Of Serenity And Reflection At Madison Square Park

A new 44-foot-tall sculpture created by Jaume Plensa, a world-renowned artist has been installed at Madison Square Park. Plensa created the white, gel-coated fiberglass artwork as a monument to everyday people. The sculpture depicts the face of a 9-year-old girl. The work was heavily influenced by the mythical Greek nymph Echo, for which it is named. According to Greek mythology, Echo distracted Zeus' wife, Hera, with long and entertaining tales while Zeus cavorted with other sprites. When Hera found out, she punished Echo by taking away her voice, except for an ability to echo, or reflect, others’ words. The tale lends insight into the meaning behind Plensa's artwork. In this sculpture, Plensa “aims to introduce a quietness to the park, allowing viewers a moment of serenity and reflection in the heart of the city that never sleeps.” 

Echo officially opens on May 5, and the sculpture will remain in Madison Square Park until mid-August. The photos above were taken last Sunday. It is the largest monolithic art exhibition in the seven-year history of the park's Mad. Sq. Art public art program. Echo’s presence throughout the summer is supposed to remind New Yorkers to take a break, reflect and contemplate in the city that never sleeps. (information from the epoch times)

Jaume Plensa, born and based in Barcelona, is one of the world’s leading contemporary sculptors. Working in a wide variety of materials, Plensa has invigorated the practice of figurative sculpture with works that examine the intersection of the human form, language and communication and global citizenship.

Jim Campbell's SCATTERED LIGHT Premiere At Madison Square Park

 

Using a Grand Central Terminal footage, Mr. Campbell programmed the LED lights to display low-resolution, moving images as individual pixels within the array.

video from abernheimer

Scattered Light, the New York public art debut of pioneering new media artist JIM CAMPBELL opened this evening at Madison Square Park. Campbell’s exhibition features three new major public art commissions, including "Scattered Light," his largest and most ambitious work to date. This mesmerizing public art installation runs through the fall and winter.

From http://www.nycgovparks.org/art and https://www.madisonsquarepark.org

With "Scattered Light," Campbell has hung nearly 2,000 LED lights, encased in standard light-bulb casings, from a massive suspension truss standing 20 feet high and stretching 80 feet down the center of the Oval Lawn. These LEDs have been programmed and sequenced by Campbell to turn and off in such a way that from the pathways of Madison Square Park—and from the major avenues beyond the park’s boundaries—it will appear as though the shadows of people and animals are passing across a massive, gently-undulating amorphous field of light.

Jim Campbell was born in 1956 in Chicago and educated at M.I.T., earning degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. A former Silicon Valley engineer, Campbell has emerged as one of the preeminent new media artists of this generation, inspired by 1970s research conducted by Bell Labs on low-resolution imagery and cognitive thresholds for accurate perception. Pixilated digital imagery has since become the lingua franca of contemporary visual culture and communication thanks to digital technology’s transformation of the way our society creates, shares and preserves images. Campbell’s art reduces both static and moving imagery to its barest essence—the pixels that serve as the elementary building blocks of so much of what we see—and poeticizes it, creating a space of exchange between artwork and viewer in which the human brain provides context and meaning to meticulously ordered and animated fragments of light. Campbell’s work is included the collections of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is the honored recipient of various public art commissions and awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship Award, Langlois Foundation Grant, and a Rockefeller Fellowship Award in Multimedia, among others. As an engineer, Campbell holds more than a dozen patents in the field of video image processing. His monograph Material Light was published by Hatje Cantz in 2010. Jim Campbell lives and works in San Francisco and is represented by Hosfelt, San Francisco and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York.

In Progress: Light Artist JIM CAMPBELL's Installation of "Scattered Light" At Madison Square Park

(See the night time photos from the Scattered Light Premiere at Madison Square Park)

Last Sunday, I captured these images of workers installing a new artwork by San Francisco-based light artist , JIM CAMPBELL at Madison Square Park. The art installation will open tomorrow, October 21. The main piece, called "Scattered Light" is being installed in the park's central oval lawn and features 3-D matrix of about 2,000 LEDs hanging on an 80-feet-wide support and displaying flickering human silhouettes when seen from a certain vantage point. (information from http://www.nycgovparks.org/art and https://www.madisonsquarepark.org). From other angles, the play of flickering lights will seem abstract, but still beautiful and interesting to watch. The main piece will be accompanied by two other components for the show that will run through this fall and winter (December 10).

Mr. Campbell was first trained as an engineer, and most of his work incorporates very complex lighting rigs, elaborate video systems and very unconventional screens. The centerpiece of his show this spring at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea, Exploded View, looked like a group of elegant, scintillating light garlands, except at one angle, from which a short video loop showed a human silhouette running, falling, getting up and running again until it fell. "Scattered Light" will be very similar, except that the blinking light-bulb figures will be life-sized.