The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum has unveiled several new outdoor works ranging from small-scale bronze pieces in Alice’s Garden to large-scale commissions on the park’s main lawns to two monumental pieces that will be installed by the community in July and August in collaboration with a visiting artist. All sculptures are on loan and temporary, allowing deCordova to offer a constantly evolving landscape of art and nature for visitors.
Four of the sculptures were installed in the spring and two will be installed in July and August. On view now:
David Nash, “Spiral” (2014)
Nash consciously invokes earth, water, fire, and wind when transforming his earlier wooden sculpture, as he floats them down a river, chars their surface, or leaves them in the elements for decades. His incorporation of bronze casting as part of this practice continues themes of change, decay, and alteration, especially as he melts and solders metal. As some of Nash’s early wooden works begin to decay naturally, bronze versions offer a method of preserving their forms for posterity, while not interfering in the original wooden objects’ physical conditions
Michelle Grabner, “Untitled” (2018)
“Untitled” is part of a series of cast bronze sculptures of worn, knitted, and crocheted blankets. It transposes fiber to bronze, plush to hard, droopy to erect, warm to cold, and functional item to display object. The humility of Untitled’s formlessness lends the work a sense of irony. By appropriating bronze for a subject as sentimental and quotidian as a used blanket, Grabner throws open the tradition of cast-bronze sculpture, raising questions about why we immortalize certain subjects and how we determine which artifacts are disposable. At deCordova, “Untitled” is featured among trees, shrubs, rocks, and illusionistic sculptures in Alice’s Garden that similarly evoke familiar forms and textures from everyday life.
PLATFORM 24: Wardell Milan, “Sunday, Sitting on the Bank of Butterfly Meadow” (2013/2019) and B. Wurtz, “Kitchen Trees” (2018)
See “News acorns” in the Lincoln Squirrel (June 19, 2019). Also see the September 26 event with Milan below.
Coming up
Marren Hassinger, “Monument 3 (Standing Rectangle)” and “Monument 6 (Square)” (2018) — community installation on July 24–26 on the Entrance Lawn
Marren Hassinger’s “Monuments” envision a community coming together to create art with materials that surround us. Continuing her lifelong inquiry into the relationship of sculpture and nature, their installation requires volunteers to clean, braid, and insert branches within the wire structure of her large forms. The work will be completed in the park over the course of three days by visitors who sign up to volunteer in shifts (click here for details and registration). The artist will be on site to assist in the installation on July 26.
PLATFORM 25: Leeza Meksin, “Turret Tops” (2019) — coming August 19 to the South Lawn
For “Turrets Tops,” an original outdoor commission, Leeza Meksin will create two life-sized replicas of deCordova’s iconic museum building turrets in the park. Draping these towering conical forms with vibrantly colored neoprene, Meksin combines textile patterns and ornamental architectural details to articulate connections between the fashions we use to cover our bodies and the dwellings we inhabit. The installation encourages visitors to recognize assumptions about clothing and gender, architecture and ornament that filter into our daily lives.
Also see the August 24 workshop with Meksin below.
Related programs
Neoprene workshop with artist Leeza Meksin
Saturday, Aug. 24, 2–5 p.m.
Join PLATFORM artist Leeza Meksin for an all-ages outdoor workshop exploring neoprene, the popular fabric used for scuba gear, shape wear, mouse pads, and much more. Practice new ways of testing your creativity with different fabrics and learn more about Meksin’s new “Turret Tops” installation. Free with admission or membership; register online here.
Picnic and conversation with Wardell Milan
Thursday, Sept. 26, 12–1 p.m.
Join artist Wardell Milan for a picnic and conversation in the park, where we will channel the pastoral energy from his billboard commission “Sunday, Sitting on the Bank of Butterfly Hill.” Learn about Milan’s process and inspirational sources, from the modernist photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Nature.” Please bring your own lunch. Free with admission or membership; register online here.