Jessica Segall

Jessica Segall’s Fugue in B♭ is an observational beehive and audiovisual sculpture, comprised of a piano harp’s cast iron string chassis enclosed in wood and plexiglass. Inside the frame is a contact microphone, which amplifies sounds of bee activity and its resonance on the piano strings through outdoor speakers in the park. The frame is vented and has a means of egress on top for the bees to forage and return to the hive. The salvaged piano recalls the changing industrial landscape of the neighborhood, exemplified by the Sohmer & Co. Piano Factory Building turned condominium overlooking the park. The piece can be considered an homage to nineteenth-century Astoria which was once a major industrial port and hub of piano manufacturing.

Catalogue

Marking Socrates Sculpture Park’s 30th anniversary this year, the institution presents LANDMARK, a series of artist commissions and projects that transforms the land both physically and symbolically. Once an industrial landfill and illegal dumping ground, Socrates has transformed itself into New York City’s preeminent sculpture park and social space for public art, community engagement and urban discovery. LANDMARK directly addresses the idea of place as intimately tied to social and ecological structures, to maintenance and stewardship, and to evolution over time.

View the exhibition catalogue free online HERE>>>, a print version is not available.

Solid concrete pillows are staked against one another to create a “cushion fort”, like the type that children create out of sofa pillows. There is a dark humor to this work, as it plays between the contrasting materials — pillows and concrete — and drastically divergent actions — simple children’s games and real-life adult combat.

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