New Works of Sculpture along Academy Street in Cary

by Julie Z. Russo

  Inspired by North Carolina’s varied landscape and climate, the symbolism of circles, or foreign cultures, the 12 artists selected to display their sculptures along Academy Street in Cary through 2014 starting this Friday bring national prominence to the art of using earth’s elements to express nature’s diversity. The artists include Greensboro sculptor Jim Galluci whose “Cotton Column” is an illuminated tower of cotton ball-shaped puffs. The City of Raleigh's Public Art and Design Board announced in early August that Mr. Galluci was also selected to build a light structure at the new Southeastern Tennis Center in Raleigh. Paul Hill uses steel, wood, and fused glass in his “Natural Embrace” to pay tribute to native plant life here, and Mark Krucke’s “Dancing Birches” is a show of support for what he calls “the evolution of sustainability and a period of understanding on the planet.”

 Working with nature to give form and movement to inanimate objects, call attention to or venerate the environment is what makes this collection of sculptures impressive. Noticing the horse’s firey red element in “Colorful,” artist Jonathan Bowling created another skeletal horse sculpture as a compliment to the one he built on display at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC. “Earth, Fire, and Wind” is the concept of Hannah Jubran’s painted steel sculpture, and a bulbous, steel cloud form is entitled “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in Jonathan Hills’ new work. The opening of the 2013 Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition supported by Cary Visual Art and the Town of Cary is this Friday, June 9 at the Cary Arts Center. The public is invited to mingle with the artists and juror Cheryl Stewart, an art consultant at RDU International Airport, during an evening reception and vote on the best of show.

  For the sixth consecutive year, Cary Visual Art (CVA) has brought together a collection of some of the most notable sculptures in the country to give downtown Cary distinction as a cultural center and leader in arts programming. CVA brings art works valued at more than $1 million to parks, businesses, and public property across the town of Cary. Starting this August through June of 2014, pedestrians along Cary’s Academy Street will also view a limestone sculpture of stacked Os by Paris Alexander; three towers of porous steel called “Bare Bones” by Christian Hansen; and an O-shaped structure of fabricated steel and aluminum with a blue steel object running through it by Wayne Vaughn. Two steel ring towers are said to be “joined together in dance, discussion, and struggle,” according to Sculptor Gary Gresko for his work “Interaction.” In “Back to Kyoto,” artist Wayne Trapp has constructed a steel sculpture out of the Japanese character for the city of Kyoto, and Rudy Rudsnill in his “FS.939.07” has created a galvanized steel and cooper structure that is part bird-house, part looped-perch, in what he hopes is a narrative about the “familial.”