2014

"The Three Fates," sometimes known as "Has Anyone Seen Larry," is an aluminum and foam sculptural group cast in 2011 by Seward Johnson. The tableau was inspired by Odilon Redon’s 1900 oil on wood panel Les Trois Parques (The Three Fates). As evident from its alternate title, Les Sorcières de Macbeth, the original painting depicts the three witches or weird sisters from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Johnson extended the painting adding a boiling pot of the witches brew.

"The Three Fates," sometimes known as "Has Anyone Seen Larry," is an aluminum and foam sculptural group cast in 2011 by Seward Johnson. The tableau was inspired by Odilon Redon’s 1900 oil on wood panel Les Trois Parques (The Three Fates). As evident from its alternate title, Les Sorcières de Macbeth, the original painting depicts the three witches or weird sisters from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Johnson extended the painting adding a boiling pot of the witches brew.

"Transduction-Hamilton" (whatever that name means!) was sculpted in 2008 by Suzanne Reese-Horvitz and Robert Roesch. It is made of Cor Ten steel, stainless steel, gold leaf, silver leaf, and LED lights powered by solar cells. While they are known throughout the world for their unique individual art, Roesch and Reese-Horvitz have collaborated on many large-scale public commissions in glass and steel, and have served as cultural advisors to United States embassies in the Middle East, South America, and Southeast Asia. Their pieces explore the scientific as well as the aesthetic, combining the issues of a "green" world by using solar power to soften and transform the severity of the planes of cor-ten steel which comprise their work. Whereas Roesch’s contribution to the collaboration deals with formal shapes and the raw power of the sculptural medium, Reese-Horvitz adds painterly surface treatments that establish the placement of "Transduction – Hamilton" in a mapping context.

Dorion is a stainless steel sculpture created in 1986 by Bruce Beasley, one of the foremost sculptors on the West Coast. His interests in natural science and technology inspire him to construct dynamic sculptures which simultaneously expand into and envelop space. He achieves this through the repetitive use of planar crystalline forms acting as building blocks for the complex structures. His conceptions and designs are aided by a sophisticated, three-dimensional computer program that enables him to experiment with variations of an idea before actually building the components. Beasley created numerous stainless steel works like ‘Dorion’ during the 1980s. Since then he has been making works in bronze based upon simple structures like the cube.

"Between Appointments" is a life-size painted bronze sculpture originally cast in 1986 by Seward Johnson. It depicts a businessman catching a nap on a park bench, with his face draped by an edition of the New York Times newspaper. If you look carefully, you can see that the issue of the paper reproduces a story covering the lawsuit in which Seward and his five siblings contested the terms of their father’s will. Although their father had disinherited them, their lawsuit was successful.

"Between Appointments" is a life-size painted bronze sculpture originally cast in 1986 by Seward Johnson. It depicts a businessman catching a nap on a park bench, with his face draped by an edition of the New York Times newspaper. If you look carefully, you can see that the issue of the paper reproduces a story covering the lawsuit in which Seward and his five siblings contested the terms of their father’s will. Although their father had disinherited them, their lawsuit was successful.

"The Nine Muses," by sculptor Carlos Dorrien, is a multi-component grouping carved from Vermont granite. This ambitious project was realized over a course of seven years. Through its title, medium, appearance, and arrangement, "The Nine Muses" is suggestive of ruins and triggers associations with statuary from Egypt, Greece, pre-Columbian sites, and other past civilizations. Granite slabs, cut and pieced together almost in a puzzle formation, form the floor of the installation, further reinforcing the allusion to an ancient temple and cleverly forming a support base without reliance on a pedestal. The standing figures with differing degrees of recognizable feminine characteristics resemble caryatids (support columns in the shape of a woman) found in Greek architecture, while others are more abstract, roughly hewn and less clearly defined. The number of figures holds significance in that there were nine muses in classical mythology, all daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who presided over the arts and sciences. That number, the divine three multiplied by itself, is also symbolic of completion and eternity. Instead of a name, each sculpture has been assigned a symbolic number based on attributes described in the study of numerology.

Crack the Whip, a life-scale bronze sculpture of children at play in a circle, was cast by Seward Johnson in 1984. Crack the Whip is a simple outdoor children’s game that involves physical coordination, and is usually played in small groups, either on grass or ice. One player, chosen as the "head" of the whip, runs (or skates) around in random directions, with subsequent players holding on to the hand of the previous player. The entire "tail" of the whip moves in those directions, but with much more force toward the end of the tail. The longer the tail, the more the forces act on the last player, and the tighter they have to hold on. As the game progresses, and more players fall off, some of those who were previously located near the end of the tail and have fallen off can "move up" and be in a more secure position by grabbing onto the tail as it is moving, provided they can get back on before some of the others do. There is no objective to this game other than the enjoyment of the experience. The game is also illustrated in Winslow Homer’s painting Snap the Whip of 1872.