You may remember seeing this colorful water tower sculpture recently gracing the DUMBO skyline. Or at least you might have thought it was this one. In fact, that one is still perched on the a rooftop nearby. Over the weekend, however, a second piece by Tom Fruin--Watertower II--parked itself temporarily between the two bridges. According to Fruin, when a collector in Wisconsin asked to purchase the rooftop installation for a private sculpture park, he decided to replicate the original, again using steel and reclaimed plexiglass. If you haven't seen the rooftop piece, you have another month to head to 20 Jay Street to check it out.
This month, the Madison Square Park Conservancy unveiled a massively ambitious installation by the New York artist Orly Genger. Genger has crocheted 50 tons of lobster-fishing rope (which took two years for her team to clean) to create three open-air rooms spread throughout the park, each saturated in paint with a different primary color. The walls suggest a grainier, softer and more vibrant counterpoint to Richard Serra's monumental Cor-Ten works. "Red, Yellow and Blue" immerses itself in the landscape, diving into and emerging from the earth, weaving around the trees to form intimate spaces under the park's canopy. This beautiful creation definitely warrants a trip to the park. Luckily, it will remain there through Labor Day, so there's still plenty of time.
If you find yourself near Madison Square Park over the next couple of weeks, be sure to stop by the mammoth sculpture in Flatiron Plaza. Created by Will Ryman, Bird stands 12' tall and weighs in at 5 tons. With the exception of the rose-in-beak, the entire sculpture comprises around 5,500 nails, both off-the-shelf and custom-fabricated. Rather than methods of attachment serving a greater composition, the nails themselves form the structure and the surface. The sculpture will be on view through April 21.
