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Artist Pays Tribute to Late Parks Employee in Sculpture

By Mary Johnson | October 17, 2011 8:45am
A rendering of Inveterate Composition for Clare, a multimedia sculpture which will soon be installed in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza across from the United Nations.
A rendering of Inveterate Composition for Clare, a multimedia sculpture which will soon be installed in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza across from the United Nations.
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Rachel Owens

TURTLE BAY — A sculpture involving chunks of Humvees is coming to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza next month, realizing a project that has been two years in the making.

Artist Rachel Owens, 39, is creating a temporary multimedia installation featuring lights, sound and pieces of the environmentalist's enemy for the park located across from the United Nations.

The piece has political and environmental connotations, but it’s also a tribute to the Parks Department curator, Clare Weiss,  who championed Owens’ work before she died of breast cancer in 2010.

Owens named the sculpture the “Inveterate Composition for Clare” to honor Weiss posthumously for her work in getting the whole project started.

“It was probably one of the last projects that she worked on,” Owens said. “And she was such an advocate for me. I wanted to do that for her.”

Weiss was the curator of public art for the New York City Parks Department from 2005 to 2009.

“This is kind of [Rachel Owens’] homage to working with Clare because Clare pushed her to challenge herself,” said Jennifer Lantzas, the department’s current public art coordinator.

Owens first met with Weiss in 2009. At the time, Weiss’ breast cancer was in remission, Owens said.

“We had a meeting because she wanted to work on a project with me, and I had several different proposals, this one being by far the most intense and ambitious,” Owens said. “We just decided that we were going to start working on it.”

But the cancer came back. Six months later, Weiss’ condition had deteriorated to the point where she had to leave her job, Owens said. In January of 2010, she passed away. The Parks Department also has a separate arts initiative, The Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award, in her honor.

“She was an amazing person. She had tons of energy,” said Owens, who works with the ZieherSmith gallery in Chelsea. “After that happened, there was a lull [in the project].”

When Lantzas took over as the Parks Department’s public art coordinator, the project started moving again, and the artist began a lengthy approval process.

On Wednesday, Community Board 6 passed a resolution in support of the new sculpture, and Sherrill Kazan, president of Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, said her organization welcomes the influx of public art in the space.

“I’m always in awe of these fabulous artists,” Kazan said. “They seem to look at our area as an opportunity.”

The sculpture consists of chunks of Humvees mashed together to form a giant iceberg.

Owens, who lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn, originally wanted to use real, decommissioned military Humvees for the piece, which unites the concepts of war, violence and environmental devastation, she said. But after conducting a bit of research, she found out it would be very difficult, if not totally impossible, to obtain the real thing.

Instead, she found a company in Utah that makes replicas of these vehicles. She raised more than $17,000 on Kickstarter to purchase those instead.  

“I actually like that extra layer of it,” Owens said of her decision to use the replicas. “Because the pieces were actually made for me and I have kind of scrambled them, it takes away a lot of the real, explicit violence.”

To finance the remainder of the project, the ZieherSmith gallery helped Owens secure private donations. She also received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, she said.

When it is completed, the sculpture will be painted a glossy white, with several taillights that will brighten and dim slowly to the sounds of humpback whale songs, which she said have a mournful quality.

“You know it’s a whale, but it definitely has this emotional resonance of crying,” Owens said.

The location directly in front of the United Nations is perfect, she added, given the political nature of her sculpture and the fact the plaza has been the site of numerous protests and demonstrations.

The installation is expected to be unveiled on Nov. 13.