LOWER EAST SIDE — Sculptures designed to look like the tectonic plates beneath the earth's surface will rise in Sara D. Roosevelt Park later this summer.
Called "Uplift," the large-scale artwork by Brooklyn's Jarrod Beck will be made of salvaged wood and discarded rubber roofing, layered to look like slabs of rock. The sculptures, which will be 30- to 40-feet long and 6- to 7-feet tall, will be illuminated by LED lights at night, Beck said.
“I wanted to make a piece [to] kind of slow people down and maybe help them consider another kind of time,” said Beck, 36.
The sculptures will be installed in late August or early September in the park between the basketball courts and staircase near Houston Street, said Jennifer Lantzas, the Parks Department’s public art coordinator.
“It’s going to be these amazing shapes that you’re going to walk through and around,” she said.
The Parks Department chose Beck out of more than 80 artists to win the Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award, given annually since 2011 in memory of Weiss, who served as the department’s curator of public art from 2005 to 2009. The award comes with a $10,000 prize.
Beck’s work focuses on landscapes, geology and time and relies on materials to communicate emotion, he said. He has previously exhibited at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, the Wave Hill Garden and Cultural Center in The Bronx and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in Massachusetts.
"Uplift" will be on display in Sara D. Roosevelt Park for about a year.
