MONUMENTAL (PUBLIC) ARTS
FROM MODELS TO MONUMENTS
CAROLINE BERGONZI SPIRIT
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 begining 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, lead by Greg Wyatt, League instructor and sculptor-in-residence at St. John the Divine, 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.