Extensive sculpture series blossoms in Harlem’s parks

After a particularly heavy rainstorm in April, curator Savona Bailey-McClain waded through flooded Morningside Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Alongside her, sculptors were searching for the ideal location for their artworks as part of the Harlem Sculpture Gardens. Bailey-McClain and the artists trudged through the flooded park and laid the foundation for the public art project and an artist-supported climate justice initiative.

The neighborhood’s largest public art exhibition to date, Harlem Sculpture Gardens is showing two dozen works by artists of color documenting identity, diaspora and Harlem tradition in local public parks through October. Bailey-McClain, director of the West Harlem Arts Fund, and Michael Gormley, director of the New York Artists Equity Association, co-curated the exhibition from a pool of submissions to an open call. The final product, after a year of writing grant proposals and The curation extends across Morningside Park, Jackie Robinson Park, Montefiore Square and elsewhere and includes There are several surviving permanent installations in the neighborhood, such as Alison Saar’s statue of Harriet Tubman, “Swing Low” (2008).

According to the curators, the exhibition addresses the legacy of late Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage, who directed the Harlem Community Art Center during the New Deal era and co-founded the Harlem Artists Guild. Although her passionate criticism of racial inequality in the art world cost her chances of recognition, Savage broke barriers for future generations and became an influential mentor to numerous Harlem artists.

“(Savage) said, ‘Let me help the next generation,'” Bailey-McClain said Hyperallergic“These are the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance and beyond.”

After the flooding of Morningside Park in the spring, the project took on a second mission: strengthening the climate resilientence in Harlem.

“We have seen the impacts of climate change, the flooding in Morningside, the soil erosion in St. Nicholas and the soil compaction in Jackie Robinson,” Bailey-McClain explained.

Hoping to work with the local community, she founded the Resiliency Coalition, which was joined by various tenant associations, members of the City Council, the State Assembly, and representatives from the Bond Center and the School of Architecture at City College of New York.

Bailey-McClain outlined her vision for the coalition in a commentary for the Amsterdam News in April. She added that she plans to lobby the city for a park maintenance program that trains young people, particularly those “caught up in the justice system,” to become park culturalists who maintain local green spaces. The coalition will host a forum on Sept. 24 to discuss local geography and how to get young people into the workforce.

Bronx-based multimedia artist Dianne Smith shared Bailey-McClain’s interest in uniting the natural world with Harlem’s urban landscape. She mixed wire and branches, weaving aluminum strands into knots that stretched across a sidewalk railing to create “Echoes of the Path,” currently on display in St. Nicholas Park.

“I chose weaving in part because it’s a big part of my heritage,” she said. “My mother and sister were weavers in Belize… I started taking it up as a kind of homage.”

“Hands are really important when we talk to women across the diaspora of black and brown women about this idea of ​​work,” Smith added.

The sculpture “Jungle” by Dominican-born artist Iliana Emilia García in Jackie Robinson Park also pays tribute Diaspora women. With seven metal chairs whose legs tower over her, the artist brings the culturally interwoven history of the island to Harlem and creates what she calls the quintessential “Dominican Chair.”

“We think it’s ours, but in reality the design is European, the weave is African and the material is from the islands,” she said. “It’s almost like the DNA of everyone on the island.”

For García, chairs symbolize place. She says: “When you have a chair, you sit there and write history.”

In the meantime, Sculptor Sherwin Banfield brings Kool DJ Red Alert, one of the founding fathers of hip Oops, back to Harlem’s parks.

“This piece is part of a work I am doing to monumentalize and preserve the history of hip-hop artists,” said Banfield Hyperallergic“DJ Red Alert is a legend. He is an integral part of hip-hop history.”

Banfield’s bronze sculpture “YEAA-aaaa-ah” in Montefiore Park features a real speaker powered by a solar panel, for which Kool DJ Red Alert created a custom sound set. The pioneering DJ participated in a grand opening ceremony to activate the sculpture in the park in July.

Although the historic public exhibition has only been running for a few months, the Harlem Sculpture Gardens have already laid the groundwork for an artist-led climate justice movement. Bailey-McClain hopes the show will become an annual event, inviting new generations to engage with the symbiotic relationship between the parks and the art history of Harlem.