Contact: Holly Flitcroft, 315-724-8381

Utica, N.Y. – The Griffiss International Sculpture Garden continues to grow. The latest addition is Land Forms by Ithaca artist Rob Licht, installed in November 2010, and now part of the permanent collection. One of two artists whose work was selected in 2010, Licht’s piece is visible from a main thoroughfare at Griffiss, Route 825. The other artist awarded a commission is Oneonta area artist Katarina Issakson whose piece, Sisyphus, will be installed in the spring. The installation of the Isaksson will mark the 19th sculpture to be sited since the young sculpture park’s inception only three years ago. In 2010 the Sculpture Garden also purchased Peels by John von Bergen, and Argonaut by Jonathan Kirk, both initially loans to the park. All of the public works are created by professional artists associated with the Sculpture Space international program.

Griffiss International Sculpture Garden, a unique outdoor sculpture garden located in an industrial development park in Upstate New York, is located on the grounds of the Griffiss Business and Technology Park in Rome, N.Y. According to Sculpture Space Executive Director Sydney Waller, “This kind of cultural project within a thriving business park — complete with an airfield and railroad — is thought to be the only one of its kind in the nation.”

Part of a Master Plan designed by Boston-based Sasaki Associates, the sculptures reflect an unusual collaboration between Sculpture Space, Griffiss Park Landowners Association and the Griffiss Local Development Corporation of Rome, New York and Griffiss Utilities Corporation. GPLA works with other entities to promote and expand business in Central New York State’s Griffiss Business and Technology Park, a 3,500 acre former U.S. Air Force Base now home to 65 businesses with more than 5,800 employees.

The eight new sculptures installed in 2009 included a work uniquely supported by the nearby City of Utica. The city donated a 15-foot maple tree from its department of parks and recreation. Sculpture Space alumnus and local established artist James McDermid carved an abstract sculpture from the tree, entitled ‘Wish To Fly’.

Other works added in 2009: Polish artist Tomasz Domanski fabricated and assembled his stunning aluminum piece “Chimney”, that integrated an ‘art after dark’ theme. Also part of the ‘art after dark’ theme, which was developed by consultant Ken Kahn, California native Mark Abildgaard installed two glass columns that serve as markers for the new nature trails. British-born artists Jenny Polak and Jonathan Kirk both created interactive sculptures, Polak’s Lookout Landing and Kirk’s Pagoda Pavilion. Kirk’s Pagoda Pavilion is distinguished as an award winning commission selected in response to a ‘Griffiss Gazebo’ invitational for proposals.

Several works at the garden can be categorized as “green” art, including Lookout Landing by Jenny Polak, which is lit by LED solar-powered lights. Both Lookout Landing and Pagoda Pavilion can provide seating to park visitors.

The 2010 Artists include:

Artist Katarina Issakson, originally from Goteborg, Sweden, erected her welded steel and rock sculpture entitled “Contemplating Sisyphus.” This is the third in a series of works entitled “Sisyphus” that Issakson has been working on since 2005.

Issakson was educated in the United States and received her MFA from Hunter College in New York City. She exhibits frequently in New York and her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine and the Observer-Dispatch. Today she teaches art at Hunter College in New York City, helps her family run their organic farm in Franklin, NY and, most importantly, continues to make her art.

Issakson has outdoor sculptural installations at the Long Island University and more recently at the Griffiss International Sculpture Garden in Rome, NY. She was awarded a Sculpture Space fellowship in 1987, an invaluable experience for Isaksson. As she remembers, “With the funding, space, and time, it made it possible for me to realize a critical piece. It was a fantastic time with wonderful people.”

Rob Licht lives in Trumansburg, NY, in Upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region. He developed an early interest in art and design, influenced by his father, an architect and watercolorist. His formal training includes a BFA in Sculpture from the Maine College of Art (formerly Portland School of Art) and an MFA from Cornell University. Licht has exhibited his sculpture and drawings throughout the Northeast including in Rochester, NY, Portland, ME and Philadelphia, PA. Most recently he has exhibited at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY and at City Lights in Ithaca, NY. His work was also included in the Munson Williams Proctor Museum of Art Central New York Artists exhibition (1995). Licht served as Director of the State of the Art Gallery in Ithaca. He has taught sculpture, drawing and design at Ithaca College, as well as Metal Sculpture to adult education students at Cornell University and at the Maine College of Art Summer program. He has also been a visiting artist at various colleges and grade schools.

Land Forms, commissioned for the Sculpture Garden in 2010, evolved from a lifelong interest in and aesthetic investigation of the landscape. It is created of welded steel that is powder coated for color and durability. “My work explores the influence of landscape on the individual by addressing the power of certain forms found in nature to evoke memory, emotion and anthropomorphic physicality….the works celebrate the poetic; [and ]… question our increasingly dysfunctional relationship with the natural world. Nature is perceived as a mirror – not only of our own physical form, but of our relationship with our inner selves.”

Rob Licht’s primary medium is welded steel. He also works in wood, cement, cast bronze and other materials as well as drawing and etching. His sculptures range in scale from small pedestal pieces to large outdoor works. In between creating art and teaching he has worked in the building trades including: masonry, ornamental plaster, woodworking and welding.

Awarded a residency in 1988, Licht says of his time at Sculpture Space: "The space and equipment afforded me the luxury of working on a large scale, and, more importantly, time during which I was to do none other than make art. This afforded me the opportunity to ruminate on ideas for sculpture, many of which are still bearing the fruit of realized work. My latest large scale piece, Land Forms, is one such work whose genesis can be traced back to the time spent as an artist-in- residence at Sculpture Space."

Blue Light Column Mark Abildgaard

Revolving Door Charlie Citron

Chimney Tomasz Domanski

Pagoda Pavilion Jonathan Kirk

Lookout Landing Jenny Polak

Vermont II, Courtesy of Nadine Witkin, Estate of Isaac Witkin

wood sculpture James McDermid

 

The 2009 Artists

Californian Mark Abildgaard lives in Woodland, CA and was awarded a Sculpture Space Residency in 1985. His two pieces, Blue Light Column and Amber Light Column, are site-specific works and serve as markers for new walking trails at Griffiss. “I have always been interested in the way glass can interact with light. Early in my career I was drawn into working with cast glass because of the way the solid castings would glow in certain lighting conditions. The way that a piece of cast glass would change in appearance through the course of the day with natural light was intriguing to me.” Each column is made of glass block and stands 10 feet tall with a LED light fixture in the base to illuminate the column at night. The base for each column is a stainless steel box that houses the LED light fixture. The column is sealed by a clear panel on the top. His outdoor piece, Passage, 1985, is part of the Utica College campus art collection.

Charlie Citron lives in Amsterdam, Netherlands was awarded Residencies in 1991,1992, and 1999. Revolving Door, which is on loan for two years, is part of a two-year project when Citron studied and built environments having to do with business and office spaces especially in urban environments. “A revolving door [is] a portal, a point of entry, a transition between public space and private office space, “ the artist stated. In this sense it functioned “as a threshold, a hermetic sculptural object and as a lens which the viewer passes through.” Citron’s Revolving Door 2 is located near the rotary where Route 825 and Ellsworth Road intersect. The piece is on loan for two years.

Tomasz Domanski Born in Gizycko, Poland; lives in Wroclaw, Poland and was a Sculpture Space Artist in Residence in 1998. He traveled to the US to specifically to create Chimney. Tomasz Domanski says that the design of this work is influenced by the distinctly American movement of Minimalism – especially the work of Donald Judd and Robert Morris. In its construction, Chimney combines two worlds: the world of business and industry and the world of creativity. Straight lines, edges, and right angles have been softened in a gently undulating curved design. Moreover, the sculpture has two entirely different visages: one belonging to day, and the other to the night. During the day, the light of the sun reflects off the polished aluminum to produce a brilliant glare, and at night the amber lamp inside that casts its glow in the dark produces a very different effect. The artist hopes he has captured the spirit of collaboration between business and art that the Griffiss Business Park project embodies. Domanski feels that by providing an opportunity for the presentation of contemporary art, Griffiss Business Park is itself a beacon. It is a model of the mutual benefits that industry and the arts can realize in their coexistence.

Jonathan Kirk Born in Saffron Walden, England, Kirk now lives in Utica, New York where he served as Sculpture Space Studio Manager, 1980-2000. Kirk has the distinction of having his work selected for the Griffiss International Sculpture Garden for two consecutive years. About Pagoda Pavilion, he explains that the gazebo design is based on a variety of combined visual references including the Norwegian Stave Church, the Japanese Pagoda, the Western Pavilion, along with “and a bit of humor and whimsy lifted from my own sculptural preoccupations with certain forms and shapes that have appeared in my works over the years.” As the inaugural ‘Griffiss Gazebo’, the structure offers visitors benches that are built into the piece, which falls within a 12‘ diameter footprint.

Jenny Polak- Born in London, England, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY, and was awarded a Sculpture Space Residency in 1995. Polak describes herself as “an artist making architectural installations, drawings and web projects.” She credits her family history of migration for her deep interest in issues of immigration and border politics. When conceiving Lookout Landing, she was inspired by the “legacy and continuing significance of the [Griffiss] air base. [She] searched for an image that could convey an archaeology of flight and a structure that though intended to frame a view, might itself be visible from the air. I was also struck by the satellite view of the negative space between the [Griffiss] ‘nose docks, ’ “Polak stated. “….This trace, and my long-time interest in hidden truths made visible in art, led me towards a structure that references a hidden landing.” Her piece includes a fabric canopy fabricated by a regional sail maker.

Isaac Witkin (the estate) 1936-2006 Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1936, Witkin enjoyed a Sculpture Space Residency in Utica in 1977. The piece on loan at Griffiss, Vermont II, is unique in a distinguished series. Vermont I, 1965, is owned by the Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom, acquired circa 1972, Vermont III, Collection British Arts Council; and Vermont IV is in a private collection in Switzerland. After graduating from St. Martins School of Art in London in 1960, Witkin apprenticed with sculpture great Henry Moore. In a 1964 show at Whitechapel Gallery, also in London, Witkin and his fellow St. Martin "New Generation" sculptors made their big entry into the English art world. In 1965 his work received a first prize in the Paris Biennale. His piece, Nagas, was included in the 1966 exhibit, Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in New York. Described in Witkin’s New York Times obituary as “one of Minimalism’s defining exhibitions,” Witkin represented the British influence on the "New Art" anchored by Anthony Caro. His iconic piece is on loan to Griffiss and is installed adjacent to The Griffiss Institute in technology Heights.

James McDermid – Summer 2009 Artist-in-Residence. Though born in Chicago, IL, McDermid now lives in Rome, NY. He was a Resident at Sculpture Space in 1976, 1977, 1979, and 1987 and is wellknown as an established sculptor long associated with the Munson Williams Proctor School of Art. For the Griffiss project, McDermid chose to carve a wood sculpture, on location. His preference was to use a hollow tree log “so that the inner hollow space will be an active part of the design. “ About the location McDermid says, “It seems to me that the history of Griffiss has been about flight and its supportive technology. I would like to carve an abstract sculpture suggestive of flight, using metaphors – aspects of bird, wing, plane, and space. Lines that suggest speed, energy, and force will fracture and create illusions. I want the sculpture to avoid being grandiose by having imagery blend and weave together.”

Highlights from the inaugural year (2008) include:

Crown, 2008 Rainer Maria Wehner

Wishing Tree, 2008 Tash Taskale

Garden include Birth of Venus, 2006 Lucia Warck Meister

Crown, 2008 by Rainer Maria Wehner (b. Munich Germany), constructed of 5 ultramarine blue powder coated square steel tubes fractured randomly in acute angles and arranged as a ‘cloud of zigzags’ 21 feet in the air. Resembling a crown of thorns or giant ferns unfolding, the blue colour was purposely chosen to contradict natural associations. Crown is part of the GISG permanent collection.

Wishing Tree, 2008, by Tash Taskale (b. Ankara, Turkey), is a 25 feet high, galvanized red powder coated steel work that represents the iconic, symbolic forms that humans have created throughout history to help bring them good fortune and protection. It is the third in his series of Wishing Trees – others are in Taiwan, and Hartford, Connecticut. His works probe the origins of things by exploring oppositions such as primitive versus industrial. Wishing Tree is part of the GISG permanent collection.

Other works installed in 2008 and that on two or three year loans to the Garden include Birth of Venus, 2006, which consists of 16 translucent cast glass spheres of varying diameters (32”, 24”, and 16”). The Birth of Venus is “about strength and precariousness, the locus of beauty and storm, the source of calm and turmoil,” explains Warck Meister. The unusual scale is a fundamental element of the installation piece Warck Meister intends it to enhance our perception of the environment: “It appears as if it originated from within a body of water…. The translucent spheres sparkle in the light of the sun activating their space and surroundings. Their shine and apparent immateriality confer lightness and an organic quality to the group. As the daylight and the passing weather shift, so will the colors and reflections. The Birth of Venus merges quietly with its site.”

Four other works created between 1975 and 2006 are on loan to the Garden — after which they are available for purchase. The artists are Katarina Isaksson, SS ‘87 (Franklin, NY; b. Sweden); John McCarty, SS ’78, ’79, ‘80 (Delaplane, VA; b. VA); Cestmir Suska, SS ‘99 (Czech Republic); William Tucker, SS ‘79 (Northampton, MA; b. Egypt of British parents).

Two other works initially on loan, works by Jonathan Kirk, SS studio manager 1980-1991 (Utica, NY; b. UK) and John von Bergen, SS co-founder and alumnus (Clinton, NY; b. Sweden) are now part of the permanent collection.

Over the next ten years, planned development of the Garden will expand the scope of the collection.

All of the featured artists participated in Sculpture Space’s international residency program, where they honed their skills. Their work covers a broad spectrum across the world of contemporary sculpture. The sculptors come from Argentina, the Czech Republic, England, Poland, the Netherlands and the United States. Their works incorporate a broad range of materials from wood and fabric to glass and metal. For more than 30 years this internationally respected sculpture residency program in Utica, New York, has focused on supporting emerging and mid-career artists via two-month artist residencies. It has served as a place in which more than 475 artists from 24 countries have honed their skills and developed successful careers. Work created at Sculpture Space is exhibited in museums, galleries and parks around the world.

Sculpture Space GISC staff

Artists Liaison/Installation Coordination 2009 through present, Tina Betz; Technical Consultants: Daniel Buckingham, Scott Hartmann; Curatorial Project Director- Sydney Waller; ?Admin Support- Holly Flitcroft.