MONUMENTAL (PUBLIC) ARTS

SPIRIT / GALLERY

**"SPHINX"**
Mirror Stainless Steel, made in Monaco, in July 2016. L7 x W4 x H4 feet. MORE...

**"RED PHOENIX"**
Painted steel, made in New York, in June 2016. H5’xW4’, H11' with base. MORE...

**"WATER"**
Stainless steel. H17xW8', H5xW3 meters. Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx. MORE...

**"METAMORPHOSIS"**
Steel and Bronze. H17xW24', H5xW7 meters. Riverside Park South, Manhattan. MORE...

**“VISION”**
Painted steel, made in New York in 2018. Permanent reinstallation since 2023, Silvermine Art Center, CT, USA. MORE...

FROM MODELS TO MONUMENTS

In 2014, as I was going daily to the afternoon welding sessions of the Arts Students League of New York, the main instructor offered me the opportunity to apply to an ambitious program, M2M, “Model to Monument”.

Since the beginning of this initiative between the Art institution and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, every year each sculpture instructor could nominate a student to apply to the year education, to build up knowledge, experience, and a monumental artwork.

Each year, an international team of seven artists was gathered by a jury of art professionals and to work together, learn, think, imagine, model, build and install individual works in Riverside Park South, Manhattan, and a collaborative work, in Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx, bringing contemporary sculptures to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and visitors.

This is how I embarked in the ninth-month program, led by Greg Wyatt, League instructor and sculptor-in-residence at St. John the Divine, who trained with 6 other artists to produce work for public spaces.

The remarkable part is that our first meeting with Greg Wyatt took place at Saint John the Divine, right below a fantastic masterpiece that struck my eyes and minds when I visited Manhattan for the first time, as a teenager.