Concordia225
Concordia
Lexington, KY - Have you looked up while you’re downtown these days? If you haven’t had a chance yet, when you head down Main Street right in the center of town, across from the public library, and above the Downtown Art Center building, stop and take a look. Up.
There now stands Lexington’s newest resident, Concordia, a 30 foot tall, 15,000 pound sculpture by New York artist, DeWitt Godfrey. Made of CorTen steel the piece is comprised of eleven large cylinders in varied sizes that sit atop and beside each other forming a buttress abutting the center portion of the Downtown Art Center building.
On July 31st at 5:30 p.m. LexArt will host a dedication ceremony at the Downtown Art Center. Artist DeWitt Godfrey will offer an Artist Talk on his design process and the work completed on Concordia. The artist will be speaking in the Black Box theatre.
When viewing the piece from the street it almost looks like the bands of metal are delicate as they bend a bit toward each other but if you watched it being installed you realized this was no light, easy project.
“For me, gravity, weight, mass—the practical things are important for me to work with. I like the way you can bring gravity on as a partner,” explains artist DeWitt Godfrey.
The interplay between the cylinders will continue in what the artist refers to as a “controlled crush.”
For the day of installation Main Street was the staging area for organizing Concordia’s many components. A crane was eased into position, workmen with hard hats gathered and the fun began. Each piece was carefully hoisted to the roof and installed on an I-beam that had been designed by Poage Engineers & Associates and put into place to prepare the building to shoulder the extra weight.
The 100 degree heat didn’t seem to phase the artist and his crew or the crew from the Lexington steel erection firm Wilhite Ltd., on hand to carry out the installation. Fourteen hours later the piece was in place and Lexington’s newest public art piece was ready for its close-up.
The $72,000 project was funded by an NEA grant for public art, the LexArts public art fund, donations from local businesses and individuals, the Urban County Council and Leadership Lexington.
“This project, along with Bill Fontana’s sound sculpture, Sound Reflections installed in 2011, signifies a commitment to building a unique and world class public art collection in Lexington,” says Jim Clark, President and CEO of LexArts.
An exhibit on the second floor of the Downtown Art Center in The City Gallery documents the Concordia project from concept through installation and will be on display through September.
For more information on Concordia, City Gallery and LexArts see the LexArts website at lexarts.org.