art installation

Christo's Latest Art Project Angers Locals

Filed under: Art

Artist Christo is causing controversy yet again with another of his massive projects which involve huge draperies of fabric. The LA Times reports that the artist wants to hang translucent fabric over 5.9 miles of the Arkansas River in Colorado, 115 miles south of Denver. The project, titled "Over the River" has been in the works for years but as it heads gets closer to becoming a reality the voices against it are getting louder.

His famous projects have included wrapping islands off of Miami in fabric and installing a series of saffron-colored fabric gates in Central Park. Christo and his partner Jeanne-Claude spent over 40 years creating these massive installations around the world. She died in 2009 but the work goes on. If "Over the River" gets approval it would open in summer 2014 for two weeks. Like many of Christo's projects this would take a couple of years to pull off and this one would cost at least $50 million. Christo has created a designated website for the project which shows renderings of a river of fabric suspended above the river.

Environmentalists are at odds on the work. The Sierra Club's local group chose to support the project but others who live and work in the area think that the project will cause disruption and put this area at risk on several different levels, both affecting local businesses and local wildlife. They have banded together to appeal to the Bureau of Land Management which should decide the project's fate this spring.

Tags: art installation, christo, colorado, over the river

A Bamboo Wave Rolls in at the Met

by Bobbie Leigh (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

Anyone with a yen to climb like a monkey through a bamboo forest shouldn't miss Mike and Doug Starn's "Big Bambú" on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This bamboo colossus has a unique form for a land sculpture---a cresting wave with internal elevated pathways. Ultimately, it will measure 50-feet tall and take "audience participation" to new heights. If you are thinking of walking the "waves," wear close, rubber-soled shoes and request timed-tickets in person. Although you can visit the roof anytime, try for sunset on a Friday or Saturday. Tickets, based on first-come, first-served for walking on the elevated platforms, are bound to be in great demand as when else could you get such drop-dead views of Central Park.

Tags: art installation, bamboo, big bambu, doug and mike starn, metropolitan museum of art, new york art

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Fur, Feathers, Bugs and Butterflies at MAD

by Bobbie Leigh (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Events, Art

If the Museum of Arts and Design's new show had a soundtrack, it would be Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive." As Jovi says and MAD's show tells, "Every day it seems we're wastin' away." Yet in the fascinating "Dead or Alive" show at MAD nothing -not fur, feathers, bones, insects, shell - goes to waste. In fact, 37 international artists whose work is on view have transformed once-living material into "lively" sculpture and installations.

Rather than morbid, the work is mysterious, highly personal, and each in its own way comments on the human condition and the transcendence of life, whether man or beast. One of the most remarkable installations is Keith W. Bentley's Cauda Equina,
made up of 1.4 million hand-knotted horse hairs mounted on fabric and applied to a horse mannequin. The result is a shaggy pony that resembles a huge sheep dog in mourning. Bentley is a self-trained artist who is passionate about animals. On learning that more than 250 horses were going to be slaughtered in processing plants, the artist obtained all the hair from the horses' manes and tails. He twisted and hand-knotted them, a painstaking process that took 12 years. He then created what is, in effect, a horse-hair blanket that he placed over the pony form to create the spooky installation. The idea of covering the pony's head with a flowing veil of horse hair evokes the Victorian custom of mourning when women covered their faces with a veil.

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Tags: art installation, craft, damien hirst, design, museum of art and design, Museum of Arts and Design, new york city, new york museum, shen shaomin

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