Arts & Culture Magazine - January/February 2008 - (Page 34) ssos VOTE NOW! Vote for the sculpture you love the most, and the one you love to hate! Just put the number of your favorite or least favorite sculpture from the next 5 pages in the boxes below! sarasota season of sculpture By Tobey Albright. Photos by Gene Pollux. Public art has the potential to bring a community together. Unification through the local media and common conversation may be formulated in multiple directions at once, slowly revealing personal tastes and formal sensibilities. With the multiplicity of ideals and the diverse application of expressions, this unification happens in its most basic form through dialogue. Successful public art projects begin with the discussion of community representation at the forefront, not so much as a mode of content, but as a matter of context. Because public art is part of our public history, evolving culture, and our collective memory, our focus should be primarily on the first word of the genre at hand—public—and to encourage its most active ingredient: participation. Try to consider each artwork not as a trophy of your personal taste but as a component of difference, providing you the opportunity to think outside your box, and see with new eyes. Try to see how your opinions are revealed in comparison to those of others, in the face of the same material. In a city struggling for a clear identity, the biannual Sarasota Season of Sculpture, now in its fourth season since being conceptualized in 1998 by Artistic Director and founder Jill Kaplan, makes a commanding claim of character. “After moving to Sarasota from New York, I began having conversations with Bruce White, a sculptor and co-founder of Chicago Pier Walk,” Kaplan explains, “and Bruce had the idea to bring some of the sculptures down from the Pier Walk and exhibit them here in Sarasota.” Kaplan decided that just a few sculptures were not enough and decided to expand the idea into a Not-For-Profit responsible for organizing and producing an International Invitational Exhibition of large-scale sculptures. The exhibition was unveiled in the form of a maquette at the Selby Public Library in 1999. After garnering a positive response, the exhibition was physically realized at its current home along the bay in 2000. Since then, the exhibition has developed into one of the preeminent public art exhibitions in Florida, encouraging participation from a global roster of artists and audience. This year’s exhibition is the most diverse, incorporating several versions of conventional public art: figurative, geometric abstraction, pop, site-specific, interactive, etc. The diversity is partially responsible for the number of individuals seen perusing the bayfront on any given day, generating equally diverse responses to the presentation. Brenda Terris, the executive director, uses the following analogy to rationalize the responses. “You go to a movie, some actors you like and some you don’t, and all of those opinions can change based on the film.” Terris also has high hopes for the future of SSOS and the benefits of embracing more possibility through collaboration with other institutions and organizations in Sarasota. “We are very excited about the Niki de Saint Phalle piece at the Ringling Museum,” says Terris. Expanding the exhibition further will include projects translating the exhibition and plaques for the blind and working with the Boys and Girls Club of Sarasota. So, while the future identity of Sarasota may still be malleable, there appears to be further development towards dialogue and civility in its arts. And now, meet the artists LOVE IT! LOVE TO HATE IT! Comments (up to 250 characters) Email Address Submit 34 : : arts and culture magazine.com http://magazine.com
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