NYC Parks Brings Public Artworks to Foley Square

NYC Parks welcomes visitors to view several new monumental public artworks in Thomas Paine Park. The exhibition Dee Briggs in Foley Square includes three works that the artist completed in 2015 and 2016. Titles of the sculptures correspond to the components, dimensions, and adjacent street: 3 Rings | 6'/3" Centre; 3 Rings | 6'/3" Lafayette; and 6 Plates | 5'X10'X.5" Worth.

An artist reception will take place in the park on Thursday, May 19 from 5:30 - 8:00 p.m. The opening remarks will include Nelson Byrd Woltz Principal Thomas Woltz, FASLA, NYC Parks' Deputy Director of Public Art Jennifer Lantzas; and the artist Dee Briggs.

Located in Thomas Paine Park, part of the larger Foley Square area in Manhattan's Civic Center, the artworks deal directly with Briggs' fascination with geometry and a form of symmetry called chirality. Chirality is defined as a three-dimensional object that has no internal plane of symmetry along the x, y or z-axis, which means that the object is different from its reflection.

Growing up in western Pennsylvania's 1970s industrial landscape had a profound impact on Briggs and inspired her deep affinity for industrial materials and processes. For this exhibition, she explored the possibilities and limitations of weathered steel. "My work grows out of mathematics and architecture," Briggs notes. "They are three-dimensional patterns that are at once familiar and foreign. Heavy forms that imply weightlessness creating a tempting and engaging spatial experience."

When creating these new works, she was concerned with form and space, particularly its impact on and responsibility to people. Briggs also considered the relationships between power and place, a particularly appropriate theme given the proximity of the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse and New York State Supreme Court.

Dee Briggs, a Pittsburgh native, studied architecture at the City College of New York and received a Master of Architecture degree from Yale University. Her work is simultaneously singularly focused and widely diverse: spanning the arenas of both autonomous and site-specific large-scale sculpture, building and landscape-integrated installation, and urban-scale work focused on social justice and criticism. She exhibits nationally and her studio is located in a former fire station in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania.

NYC Parks' Art in the Parks program has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, collaborations with arts organizations and artists have produced hundreds of public art projects in New York City parks. For more information visit www.nyc.gov/parks/art.