Separating the Goats from the Sheep
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Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park has a group of new sculptures at its north-east entrance plaza. The two goats and a deer, works by young Scottish artist Ruth McKerrell (born 1983), inaugurate a significant annual prize for New York, the Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award.
Clare Weiss was a pioneering, dynamic curator of public art at New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation, a position she held from 2005-2009. Shortly after she arrived at her job Ms Weiss was diagnosed with the cancer that eventually claimed her life last year at age 43. Besides countless temporary installations of contemporary sculpture throughout the five boroughs, Ms Weiss spearheaded a program of exhibitions in the Park’s castle-like headquarters in Central Park, the Arsenal.
The $7000 commissioning prize won by Ms McKerrell allowed the artist to cast her three sculptures, worked originally in reclaimed Styrofoam, in aluminum, materials whose “freeness and rawness”, in the artist’s words, match the feisty, frolicking, winning qualities of the animals she depicts.
The sculptures remain on view at Fort Greene Park through June 2012.
