Weekend Snapshot: Number 29

For my weekend snapshot, I'm continuing on with shots from the NC Art Museum Art Park that I took this week. I have been breaking up my post about the park because I wanted to feature specific works. This will be the 4th and last post on the museum park. I included another shot of the work below in my photohunt post but I thought I'd expand on it. Crossroads/Trickster 1, 2005 is by Martha Jackson-Jarvis (American, born 1952) and marks the crossroads of two trails at the park. I shot this one at an angle but it stands upright.
Located between field and forest, the idea of the work is to mark the intersection between the two trails. The sculpture combines brightly colored Italian glass tiles, orange and red cornelian stones, and shattered bricks.
The bricks were recycled from Polk Youth Prison which stood on the property from 1920 to 1993. When the museum first moved from downtown to a large site on Blue Ridge Road in 1983, it seemed odd, particularly since it was right next to the youth prison. Eventually the prison was closed and moved. The art museum now has a 165 acres campus and in addition to the open spaces and the original museum which was built on the site, there is currently a huge expansion underway.Part of the expansion includes building a Rodin study center. The museum was given 23 works by Auguste Rodin and in addition to the study center, there will be a Rodin gallery and adjacent garden. The museum's expansion is pretty ambitious. A new 127,000 square foot building has been designed to house the museum's permanent collections and the existing museum is being renovated and will house temporary exhibits, education centers, administration, and lyrical gardens with outside galleries in the landscape. According to the museum press release, the institutions 164 acre campus will be the nation's largest museum art park with walking paths, bike trails, ecological projects conceived with artists, and site specific commissioned works. The park already has most of that but it has been evolving through the years.As a nod to the history of the site, the smokestack for the former Polk Youth Center Prison remains (pictured above next to Wind Machine by Vollis Simpson). Note - I discussed Wind Machine on my photohunt post if you are interested. Most of the prison buildings have been torn down but the museum kept the tower because it's like a monument on the horizon. I wish I had take pictures the first time I went on the art walk during its early years. Although the museum owned the prison site by then (or I think they did), near the end of the walk was part of the prison and it was covered in graffiti. That prison building has been torn down but to me the juxtaposition of the urban graffiti near to the conventional museum was very cool. I wondered if former prisoners had gone there at night and created the graffiti once it stopped being a prison.
Lowes Pavillion, 2007 by Mike Cindric and Vincent Petrarca is pictured above. From a distance this work has always seemed so small to me and I didn't really get it. It's designed to be art as shelter. I had never gone inside of it or gotten very close until my walk on Tuesday. I really liked it up close. Particularly when I went inside.Lowes Pavillion is a great place to watch the birds and I was glad that I went inside. The last shot is of what the land in front of the museum looks like at the moment. Yes, a major expansion and building project is currently imposing itself on an otherwise beautiful landscape.
For those of you who celebrate Easter, I hope you have/had a good one. I hope everyone has had a great weekend and a good week ahead. To find other weekend snapshots you can go to Weekend Snapshot or to Technorati - Weekend Snapshot