North Carolina Museum of Art - Picnic Facilities

Art Program

THE ART PROGRAM IN THE MUSEUM PARK
Artists, Architects, Landscape Designers and Environmental Scientists Work Together

Goals

Integrate art into the environment and commission innovative art projects that connect art and nature and expand the visitor’s perception of both. Visitors will encounter art while wandering along paths through the woods, across the prairie, or along the stream.
Feature the work of regional, national and international contemporary artists. Additionally, the Museum will provide opportunities for the creation of new and experimental projects in the landscape, both temporary and permanent, including collaborations between artists, architects, landscape architects, and environmental scientists.
Educate and stimulate discussions about the relationships among art, public space, landscape design, and the natural environment.

Art & Nature

The Park integrates art and nature at a new level, as artists become actively involved in the restoration of the natural landscape and the integration of works of art and ecological systems. The Museum’s current project to redesign the existing pond provides a large-scale example of an artist’s involvement in the Park’s ecosystem restoration. A nationally recognized artist is working with water quality engineers to create a new pond that cleans storm water, accommodates groups for education and stands on its own as a major work of land art. Regional, national and international artists are invited to create site-specific temporary and permanent works of art integrated with the infrastructure of the Park, including benches, footbridges, gateways and shelters. Artists are commissioned to create ephemeral works that exist for short periods of time in the Park. These temporary works of art employ natural materials to comment on the transitory state and fragility of nature, and on humankind’s constantly shifting relationship to the natural environment.

Gyre, 1999
	Thomas Sayre American, born 1950 Concrete, colored with iron oxide and reinforced with steel Gift of Artsplosure, City of Raleigh, 1999 (1999.8) Commissioned in conjunction with Artsplosure’s Millenium Celebration Arts Education Initiative with Enloe Senior High School of Wake County.
Principal funding provided by the City of Raleigh, WRAL-TV5/MIX 101.5 FM, Glaxo Wellcome, AT&T, Carolina Power & Light Company, SAS Institute, and Time Warner Cable. Additional funding provided by United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, North Carolina Arts Council, and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.
This monumental sculpture was created on site using a method of earth casting developed by the artist, Thomas Sayre. A backhoe dug out three elliptical shapes in the ground. Then a mixture of concrete and iron oxide was poured directly into the dirt trenches, which were inlaid with steel bars for reinforcement. After allowing the concrete to cure for a month, a crane lifted each curved concrete form up and out of its earth mold, and then positioned and lowered it into place. The variegated surface of the sculptural forms is a result of the iron oxide used to color the concrete and the dirt embedded in its surface from the earth casting. With a direct, physical connection to its site, the work appears to have sprung up like a natural formation rooted in the landscape. The title of the sculpture, Gyre, refers to both a circular or spiraling motion--gyration--and shape, like a vortex or tornado. The work captures this sense of motion in forms that appear as if they could easily spiral endlessly into the distance, rolling down the hill and across the fields, escaping their earthbound constraints.

Wind Machine, 2002
	Vollis Simpson American, born 1919 Steel and other media Purchased with funds from the William R. Roberson, Jr. and Frances M. Roberson Endowed Fund for North Carolina Art, 2002 (2002.4)
Simpson’s multi-colored whirligig or wind machine consists of forty separate movable elements—fans, blades, propellers, wheels, and more—enabling it to take flight with even the slightest breeze. A self-taught artist, Simpson started creating monumental, kinetic sculptures out of found objects when he retired in 1985 in a rural community in eastern North Carolina. After a lifetime of designing and building heavy equipment for moving houses and running his own repair shop, Simpson had the skills and tools necessary for building his technically complex wind machines. Recycling discarded parts from cars, trucks, bicycles, farm machinery, street lights, and highways signs, Simpson’s whirligigs transform cast-off everyday objects and industrial materials into whimsical, dancing, spinning wind machines whose sole purpose is its fantastic visual impact.

Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky, 2003
	Chris Drury British, born Sri Lanka, 1948 Stone, wood, and turf Commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Art with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 2003.
Chris Drury creates sculptures in the landscape that are intimately intertwined with the natural world. One of a recent series of works, Cloud Chamber has an ageless, primal quality, like an ancient ruin or natural formation. This shelter operates as an oversized camera obscura or a pinhole camera. A small aperture in the roof projects an inverted image of the sky onto the floor of the chamber, an effect that seems to pull the sky down to the viewer. Inside, your perspective is turned upside down. Instead of looking up at the sky, trees, or clouds, you will look down on them from above. Cloud Chamber is open every day, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. To protect the chamber, it will be closed during inclement weather.

Crossroads/Trickster 1, 2005
	Martha Jackson-Jarvis American, born 1952 Brick, steel, mortar, glass tile, stone 20 feet high x 2 feet in diameter Commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Art with funds from Wachovia Bank and a North Carolina Department of Transportation Enhancement Grant.
Martha Jackson-Jarvis’s vibrantly colored mosaic sculptures incorporate natural and man-made materials, resulting in beautifully detailed and extremely tactile works that often reference African and African American culture and draw upon personal experiences as well as history, religion, mythology, folklore, and artistic traditions. The artist was commissioned to create a sculpture, Crossroads/Trickster I, to mark the intersection of two trails in the Museum Park. Standing at a prominent site where the paved House Creek Greenway Trail meets the natural-surface Woodland Trail, the towerlike sculpture leads visitors in to the wooded areas of the Park and to Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky. Located at the threshold between field and forest, the work of art emphasizes a point of transition in experience for the Park visitor—from public to private, man-made to natural, open to enclosed. The sculpture, a tall sentinel form, combines brightly colored Italian glass tiles, orange and red carnelian stones, and shattered bricks (recycled form the Polk Youth Correctional Facility, located on this property from 1920 to 1993) to create a densely patterned, textured mosaic surface.

To see Jennie smile, 2006
	Steven Siegel American, born 1953 Newspaper and logs
Steven Siegel’s temporary sculptures consist of multiple layers of materials culled from the castoffs of contemporary culture. Encapsulating the clash between nature and culture, Siegel’s works push viewers to think about contemporary consumer culture, the depletion of natural resources, and the resulting mountains of debris and recycled materials. To see Jennie smile is composed of several tons of unused newspapers donated by The News & Observer, representing two weeks of leftovers. The artist prepared the form by removing the tops of a pair of trees, which were sectioned into small logs to form a base. The structure is anchored inside around the trunks of the trees. The paper, exposed to the elements in the forest along the Woodland Trail, is predicted to last for about 10 years.

Lowe’s Park Pavilion, 2007
	Mike Cindric and Vincent Petrarca Steel, wood, and aluminum The Lowe’s Pavilion for the North Carolina Museum of Art Park is made possible by the Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation.
Located on the edge of a stand of trees, just off the Museum trail and looking out over the prairie, this sculptural pavilion offers visitors a sheltered place to rest and provides space for park educational programs. Constructed of steel, wood, and aluminum, the pavilion provides vistas to the surrounding landscape and other artworks. The perforated, metallic skin of the pavilion changes with the time of day and the quality of light–reflecting its natural surroundings and taking on the colors of the trees, grass and sky, or completely disappearing into a moiré pattern of light and shadow. Designed and built specifically for this site, the “art-as-shelter” project blends into its natural surroundings.

Collapse I, 2000
	Ledelle Moe South African, born 1971 Concrete, construction mesh, and steel
Moe, a longtime resident of the mid-Atlantic region, grew up in Durban, South Africa, and relocated to the United States in 1994. The artist’s large-scale, concrete and steel sculptures depend on weighty materials to anchor them, both physically and conceptually. While Moe’s work is intimately informed by South African history, the distance of time and space afforded by her American residency frames her work within larger and regional contexts. These two large-scale human figure sculptures constructed of welded steel bars, construction mesh and concrete were added to the Park in the summer of 2007. Collapse I lies on an exposed site along the crest of a hill, cradled by a stand of trees. Thus situated, visitors may approach it from various angles, each offering a distinct perspective on its voluminous form. Viewed at full length, the comfortable curve of the reclining figure is in line with the surrounding landscape.

Untitled, 2007
	Ledelle Moe South African, born 1971 Concrete, construction mesh, and steel
Untitled sits nestled in a far more intimate setting in the woods enclosed upon itself as it is in relation to the breathing space within the trees. One has the sense of coming upon Untitled unawares, perhaps intruding on a moment of rest in the quiet woods, stumbling upon this cocoon of introspection.

Purchased with funds from the William R. Roberson, Jr. and Frances M. Roberson Endowed Fund for North Carolina Art, 2002 (2002.4)

Commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Art with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 2003.

Commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Art with funds from Wachovia Bank and a North Carolina Department of Transportation Enhancement Grant.

The Lowe’s Pavilion for the North Carolina Museum of Art Park is made possible by the Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation.