Bob Emser Sculpture Installation

New York Sculptor Tony Rosenthal Dies at 94

NEW YORK—Sculptor Tony Rosenthal, 94, known for his public artworks, died of a stroke July 28 in Southampton, N.Y., the New York Times reports. His most well-known sculpture may be a work from 1967, Alamo, a 15-square-foot, rotating black cube of painted Cor-Ten Steel located in Astor Place in New York’s East Village. The sculpture was originally installed as part of a program of temporary projects, but after a petition from the neighborhood’s residents, the installation became permanent. Four other public sculptures by Rosenthal stand in Manhattan, as well as dozens of similar ones in cities across the country. His work has been included in exhibitions at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, and in 1999 Rizzoli published a monograph about him.

Robert Indiana’s HOPE a celebration of Barack Obama’s message.

NEW YORK (AP) — The pop artist best known for his LOVE word sculpture has created a similar public art installation that spells HOPE — in celebration of Barack Obama’s message of hope.

New York Artist Robert Indiana’s HOPE was unveiled Thursday at Jim Kempner Fine Art, a Manhattan gallery.

Indiana’s publicist says the artist raised more than $1 million for the Obama campaign by creating HOPE prints, posters, T-shirts and other memorabilia. No decision has yet been made on where the sculpture will be permanently displayed.

The 6-foot stainless steel sculpture was shown privately during the Democratic National Convention in Denver last August.

Versions of Indiana’s classic LOVE sculpture appear in several cities around the world, including Philadelphia.

Louise Bourgeois Retrospective at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

AP Photo by Francois Mori

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will present a major retrospective of the works of Louise Bourgeois from Feb. 26 through May 17. Bourgeois, a leading figure in 20th century art, is an American who was born in Paris in 1911 and has lived in New York since 1938. The exhibition will fill the museum’s second-level galleries with over 120 works, primarily sculptural pieces, along with paintings and drawings. The last venue on a five-city world tour, the presentation at the Hirshhorn has been expanded to include five more major sculptures. Among them is the large “Crouching Spider” (2003). The nearly nine-foot-tall bronze-and-steel spider has already been installed outside the museum’s entrance, acting as an imposing greeter.

Throughout her 70-year career, Bourgeois

Bill FitzGibbons “Daystar Arch” installed

Bill FitzGibbons, installed, Daystar Arch, a 40-foot-tall arch made of jet wings with fiber optics, at the San Antonio International Airport, a project of the city’s Design Enhancement Program. The sculpture is located in the Daystar Plaza at the northwest corner of the airport, near the new parking garage.

Bill FitzGibbons received his BFA in Sculpture and Art History from the University of Tennessee, and his MFA in Sculpture and Multi-Media from Washington University in St. Louis. Bill has received over thirty public art commissions in five countries. In 1979 he became the first curator at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, Missouri. From 1985 until 1988 he was appointed as the Director of Sculpture at the Visual Art Center in Anchorage, Alaska. In 1988 he became the Department Head of Sculpture at the San Antonio Art Institute. In 1991 he was selected as a Fulbright Scholar for the Hungarian Art Academy in Budapest, Hungary. Bill has served on the adjunct faculty at Trinity University in San Antonio and has been the Executive Director of the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center since the summer of 2002. Currently Bill serves on the board of directors of the International Sculpture Center.

Louise Bourgeois’ “Crouching Spider” installed at the Hirshhorn

WASHINGTON, DC.- An eight-legged sentinel now greets visitors on their way into the Hirshhorn Museum. Standing at nearly 25 feet tall, Louise Bourgeois’ large bronze and steel sculpture “Crouching Spider” inspires an eerie fascination in passersby. There is no need to be afraid, since the artist describes her spiders as iconic “guardians,” a “defense against evil.” Since its installation earlier this week, the work of art has become an instant attraction to visitors eager to be photographed with the Jurassic-sized arachnid.

“Crouching Spider” is now on view at the Independence Avenue entrance to the Hirshhorn in anticipation of the Feb. 26 opening of “Louise Bourgeois,”a major retrospective that includes more than 120 sculptures, paintings and drawings.

The exhibition opens with Bourgeois’

Chakaia Booker and Bob Emser exhibit in: Inside Out

Inside Out
October 18, 2008-January 11, 2009

Gallery installation of Inside Out

Elmhurst At Museum in Elmhurst Illinois will host the artist reception for the exhibit Inside Out on Sunday, November 9, 2008. Inside Out will feature two important American sculptors, Chakaia Booker, who lives and works in New York and Bob Emser, from Illinois.  Their work will complement and confront, challenging the viewer to think of the artists’ expression of their emotions, memories, and internal creativity – in a sense bringing their insides out. Booker and Emser will be in attendance of the reception that runs from 2-4 pm that day.

Inside Out is an exhibition exploring and exposing our ensconced perspective of sculpture and theme.  Inside Out can suggest something made topsy-turvy and presented to the viewer in a new way; the orderly arrangement of structure is made both chaotic and lyrical.  The show’s title can also imply the act of seeing beyond the surface with the viewer encountering sculpture that creates an aesthetic impact where it does not exist.

The following an essay from the catalog written by Curator D. Neil Bremer,

Inside Out

The idiom, Inside Out, acts as a metaphor

John Clement Large Scale Sculpture In Houston, TX

International sculptor and New York City based artist John Clement is premiering his large-scale sculptures at Gallery Sonja Roesch now through November 1st.  The exhibition consists of five sculptures displayed both indoors and out as well as two representative lithographs.  With Hurricane Ike bearing down on Houston, Clement rushed to install the exhibition before Houston’s evacuation.  The opening reception, originally scheduled for September 13th the night Ike came through Houston, has been rescheduled as a closing celebration Saturday November 1, 2008 from 5-7pm.

Interlocking coils of steel fabricated from welded and painted pipe form inviting negative spaces as the curvilinear forms open dynamic dialogues with their surrounding environment.  John Clement’s sculptures

John Henry Installs 55 foot Monumental Sculpture

John Henry's "River High"

Internationally known artist John Henry will be installing his new sculpture “River High,” near the Laramie Recreation Center on Boulder Avenue this Monday, Aug. 25, and Tuesday, Aug. 26.

With a height of 55 feet, it will be visible from the surrounding valley and will signal that contemporary public art is on view in Laramie. This installation completes the University of Wyoming Art Museum exhibition of public art called “Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational.”

For the past 30 years, Henry has produced large-scale works of art for museums, cities and public institutions across the United States, Europe and Asia. Working in his sculpture studio complex in Chattanooga, Tenn., he has created some of the largest contemporary steel sculpture (up to 100 feet tall) in the United States. His most complex exhibition to date will open in Florida in October. “Drawing in Space: The Peninsula Project” will include seven monumental sculptures in seven cities, each with accompanying exhibitions.

Henry was a founding member of ConStruct, the artist-owned gallery that has promoted and organized large-scale sculpture exhibitions throughout the United States. A distinguished professor of art at Chattanooga State College, he has received the Governor’s National Award in the Arts from the state of Kentucky and

RICHARD SERRA:Thinking On Your Feet

NEW YORK—Making its North American premiere tomorrow at Film Forum in New York is a documentary about Richard Serra. Directed by Maria Anna Tappeiner the 94 minute documentary follows the production of the artist’s $20 million Guggenheim Bilbao commission The Matter of Time, installed indefinitely in 2005.

RICHARD SERRA’S monumental steel sculptures are among the defining works of art of our time. Serra is wonder fully articulate, whether talking about his early paintings, Brancusi’s influence upon him, the historical context in which his work developed, or the public controversies and even hostility his art has engendered. He elucidates how “matter imposes form on form,” the unique qualities of steel, and how a space may move simultaneously in two directions — with a lexicon that includes gravitational vectors, open and closed volume, tectonics, conical sections and torquing elipses. An installation of several immensely heavy steel plates (40 tons each) at the Bilbao Museum highlights this elegant portrait of the art world’s man of steel.