Cultural Corridor/Urban Flow is a nine-and-a-half-mile-long public artwork on the first Bus Rapid Transit Line in Oakland, California. Designed by Johanna Poethig and Mildred Howard, with Peter Richards and Joyce Hsu, the line’s 34 stations are visually connected with a “ribbon” of words and images rendered in laser-cut aluminum on handrail panels and decorative windscreens.
public art
Edoardo Tresoldi: Framing Emptiness
A former scenographer who helped to design backdrops for other people’s cinema productions, Italian sculptor Edoardo Tresoldi has since found success by putting his own work center stage. His large-scale, seemingly fragile sculptures are predominantly constructed from wire mesh, a medium that reinforces their ephemeral, mirage-like quality.
Monumental Trickery: A Conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko
In a career spanning more than 60 years, Krzysztof Wodiczko has made statues, buildings, and monuments almost magically come to life.
Offending Statues and the Dilemma of Commemoration
Until the mid-20th century, governments (especially in America and Europe) erected propagandistic statues and memorials at will, works that quickly melted into the realm of invisible street furniture alongside lamp posts and traffic lights. Over the last 50 years, however, public sculpture has become properly public.
Davina Semo: Call and Response
Davina Semo is folded over her laptop, head in her hands, elbows on the table. She makes eye contact with the camera, with me, and we both laugh. There’s really nothing else we can do. We both have the lights on—she in her studio in San Francisco, me in my home a few miles away.
Still/Moving Projects: A Sign for Our Times
Few people would consider a breakwater extending out into the harbor as the ideal location for a sculpture. But the U.K.-based artist collective Still/Moving Projects thought differently. Speedwell, their most recent outdoor work, stands on the 915-foot-long Mount Batten Breakwater in Plymouth on the south coast of England.
The Art of Collecting: Q&A with Craig Hall
“Craig Hall really loves art and artists, and he cares about getting to know them,” says Patricia Meadows, who has worked with Craig and his wife, Kathryn, for 25 years. The recipient of the ISC’s 2020 Patron Award, which was established in 1993 to recognize individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the advancement of contemporary sculpture, Hall is an entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author, vintner, and philanthropist.
2018–2020 Vancouver Biennale
VANCOUVER Various locations The Vancouver Biennale is more than an international sculpture festival—it’s a civic gestalt. Founded by Barrie Mowatt in 2002, it has consistently pushed the envelope in terms of form and content, with works that challenge the sleepy complacency and conservatism that bely the city’s reputation for cosmopolitanism.
A Conversation with Jennifer Steinkamp
Jennifer Steinkamp was one of the first to adopt digital animation software Maya over 30 years ago. Since then, she has used the program to develop a diverse body of digital animations, often at monumental scale, projected onto the walls of museums, galleries, and in public spaces.
Practical Creativity: A Conversation with Peter Fink (Part 2)
PF: In the early 1980s, opportunities for artists to engage with projects out of the gallery system were few, and the public art movement was at its very beginning. With no textbook, I started to explore how to initiate, negotiate, secure funding for, and organizationally deliver public art projects.
