Brooklyn’s gateway sculpture

Two shining and shimmering ladies hoisted 30 feet up in the air and doing a little do-si-do will become Brooklyn’s gateway sculpture come 2009.

The statue will be the centerpiece of a wide four-block median strip coming off the Manhattan Bridge at Tillary Street and the Flatbush Avenue Extension

Williamsburg-based sculptor Brian Tolle, who was awarded the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) commission, produced art renderings of his work at last week’s Community Bard 2 Land Use Committee meeting.

I

’m an artist who works with history, but I’m also interested in how it relates to the present and the future,” said Tolle.

Tolle explained that his sculpture idea consists of two translucent female figurines piece based on the Daniel Chester French sculptures that once graced both sides of the Brooklyn end of the Manhattan Bridge.

The original Chester French granite sculptures have since been moved and now flank the entrance to the Brooklyn Museum.

Chester French is most famous for doing the seated Lincoln sculpture at the Lincoln memorial in Washington DC.

The sculptures feature two female figures – one representing Brooklyn and the other Manhattan – with allegorical features at their feet.

The allegorical features at the feet of the figure representing Brooklyn include a young boy reading, a church and a lyre.

Tolle explained his figurines would be translucent casts made of fiberglass and mounted on the ends of two arms, which are on the end of a pole, and will rotate and light up at night.

The head of the sculptures will rise 42-feet in the air.

Both the platform on which the figurines are mounted, and the figurines themselves, will spin in a dance – sometimes facing each other and sometimes facing the rest of the borough and city.

History is always in a state of flux and the figures will relate to their surroundings without forgetting their past, said Tolle.

The gateway to Brooklyn sculpture is part of the city’s plan in conjunction with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership’s (DBP) to form a grand entrance into Brooklyn along the Flatbush corridor from Tillary Street going south to Hanson Place.

The money for the sculpture comes from the DCA’s Percent for Arts program, in which one percent of city construction projects is allocated for the arts.

In this case the commission is $300,000, but some of the money is expected to also go to the Brooklyn-based Donna Walcavage firm, which the DBP hired to design the streetscape.

The four-block median strip will also will include trees and other plantings going south.

Additionally the streetscape will see sidewalks widened and some parking eliminated.

Tolle, whose sculpture was picked from approximately 35-40 artists whose work was considered, was born in 1964 in Queens. He currently lives and works in Williamsburg.

He attended Parsons School of Design, New York and SUNY at Albany, and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art.

Among Tolle’s more well-known works is the Irish Hunger Memorial (2002), located at Vecsey Street in Battery Park City.

The memorial simulates a rural Irish landscape by means of a sloping grassy expanse and an abandoned cottage.

By Stephen Witt

Courier Life Publications