Author: jono8100

1995
cast polymer cement
72” x 54” x 26

The pedestal is inscribed with quotations from Countee Cullen’s poetry. On this side, in its entirety, is his famous “Incident.”

1995
cast polymer cement
72” x 54” x 26

Installed in the Countee Cullen branch of the New York Public Library. Cullen, in middle age, contemplates a marble bust of himself as a young, idealized poet wearing a traditional laurel wreath. Both “marble” and “bronze” are made of cement, evoking the “rare earth” in his poem on the sculpture’s base.

2009
bronze
22” x 9” x 12”

“I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Rosa Parks

2009
bronze
22” x 9” x 12”

The pose is also based on statues of ancient Egyptian queens. Carved from massive blocks of stone in which they are still partially embedded, these female pharaohs look as if they will never give up their seats.

2009
bronze
22” x 9” x 12”

Rosa Parks was a professional seamstress, and this is the suit, perhaps one she’d made, that she wears, along with this uncompromising expression, in her mug shot. This bronze is in the collection of the Architect of the U.S. Capitol.

2006: enlargement in progress

 

2005
clay
33” x 18” x 14”

Anderson often sang with her eyes closed, her voice alone conveying her suffering or her bliss.

2004
pencil on paper
12″ x 9″

2006
bronze
96” x 40” x 42”

 

2006
bronze
96” x 40” x 42”

Rather than evoke a regal, motionless beacon as she sometimes appeared on stage, I set her body in swirling motion, urging the viewer to walk around her and experience the statue through time, like music.

2006
bronze
96” x 40” x 42”

I tried to convey her beauty, dignity and radiant energy, to show her at an ideal time of life but hint at her youth and age, and to portray her singing with its many moods and vast range.

2006
bronze
96” x 40” x 42”

Commissioned by Converse College in Spartanburg, SC to honor the world-famous contralto, Civil Rights icon, United Nations delegate and good-will ambassador Marian Anderson, 1897- 1993.

2009, bronze
60” x 36” x 2”

This famous slogan, used by the women of the 1912 textile workers strike in Lawrence, MA, came from a 1911 poem by James Oppenheim.

2009, bronze
60” x 36” x 2”

Families face martial law in the Lawrence, MA textile workers strike.

2009, bronze
60” x 36” x 2”

Labor leaders, including Edward Cohen, witness the enactment of historic legislation.

2009, bronze
60” x 36” x 2”

Commissioned by the State of Massachusetts for the State House, Boston and sponsored by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Depicting over 100 figures, the plaque commemorates the life and death of former AFL president Edward Cohen (who was shot to death by a maniac in the governor’s office in 1907) by focusing on the struggles of working families over 175 years. The helix of marching figures depicts every important labor event in MA history.

2010
cast resin,
48” x 48” x 18”

Sally Maria Diggs (“Pinky”) is framed by a wreath of poison ivy, an American plant which, like racism, makes us suffer needlessly for our skin.

cast resin, 2010, 48” x 48” x 18”

The scale of HISTORIA TESTIS TEMPORUM: Pinky matches the giant terracotta portraits of European cultural heroes surrounded by American plants that ornament the Brooklyn Historical Society’s 1880 building.

2010
cast resin
48” x 48” x 18”

Created for the Brooklyn Historical Society. The BHS archive contains the bill of sale for “Pinky,” who in 1860, at 9 years old, was the first of a series of pale-skinned female slaves whom the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher “auctioned” to his congregation to buy their freedom.

2012
bronze, steel, glass, fragments from the rubble of the World Trade Towers,  78” x 22” x 24” (bronze: 39” height)

In 2011 on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, my 18″ sculpture of this figure was exhibited at the Cathedral and I was commissioned to create a monumental version that could incorporate fragments from the Towers that had been brought to the Cathedral in 2001.

 

Aquaresin cast, edition of 8, 1992
60” x 72” x 3”

An allegory of growing up, learning and creating. Below, small children are being trained to behave by adults who take the form of animals. Two trees provide a way to climb, through play, out of childhood into a world of imagination. There, children try on the wind and planets, slay difficult questions, sculpt clouds, fly on poems and sketchbooks, and conduct the music of the spheres.

Aquaresin cast, edition of 8, 1992
60” x 72” x 1”

On either side, like portraits of donors in a medieval triptych, are two larger figures of a girl and boy trying to figure out how to grow up. In this section “Impatience” consults a clock that doesn’t help. It reads: After, Before, Then and Now.

Aquaresin cast, edition of 8, 1992
60” x 72” x 1”

 

reinforced modified concrete, gold leaf, 1990
96” x 72” x 48”

A monument to ordinary bravery, created as a temporary installation with the New York City Parks Department, now in a corporate collection.

Vatican Casting Stone, directly applied and carved, 1981-2
frieze: 23 ft. long – each panel: 20” x 28” x 5”

The Ten Commandments as a traffic jam. Created for temporary public installation (with a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts and sponsored by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) at 10 on 8: 10 display windows in a municipal garage on 8th Avenue, NYC.  Now in a corporate collection.

photo by Paul Warchol

Vatican Casting Stone, directly applied and carved, 1981-2
frieze: 23 ft. long – each panel: 20” x 28” x 5”

The Ten Commandments as a traffic jam. Created for temporary public installation (with a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts and sponsored by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) at 10 on 8: 10 display windows in a municipal garage on Eighth Avenue, NYC. Now in a corporate collection.

photo by Paul Warchol

Vatican Casting Stone, directly applied and carved, 1981-2
frieze: 23 ft. long – each panel: 20” x 28” x 5”

The Ten Commandments as a traffic jam. Created for temporary public installation (with a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts and sponsored by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) at 10 on 8: 10 display windows in a municipal garage on Eighth Avenue, NYC. Now in a corporate collection.

photo by Paul Warchol

Vatican Casting Stone, directly applied and carved, 1981-2
frieze: 23 ft. long – each panel: 20” x 28” x 5”

Urban coveting of cars, partners and larger apartments.
The Ten Commandments as a traffic jam. Created for temporary public installation (with a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts and sponsored by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) at 10 on 8: 10 display windows in a municipal garage on Eighth Avenue, NYC. Now in a corporate collection.

photo by Paul Warchol