A new public sculpture is set to be displayed at Princeton University through October.
Eight university students enrolled in the Lewis Center for the Art’s Advanced Sculpture course installed the piece behind the Friend Center off Olden Street.
Advanced Sculpture professor Martha Friedman advised the students as they designed and constructed the sculpture, which is made of concrete and rubber.
The students began the process by researching outdoor sculpture projects, including work in the university’s collection. Then, they met with staff in the university’s Office of the Vice President for Facilities to consider specific campus locations where the sculpture could be sited.
After selecting of the lawn between the Friend Center and Mudd Library as the site, the students developed concepts, sketches and models of potential designs. The students became interested in cast concrete pilings used as foundations and extending these foundational supports out of the ground.
The final design was two erect seven-foot columns leaning in to grasp a blue rubber form between them with a third column lying nearby with another blue rubber form perched on it.
To execute the sculpture, the students welded the rebar armature for the columns in the Lewis Center’s sculpture studio and watched the pouring of the concrete columns at the manufacturer’s plant. They also cast the blue rubber forms in class.
Reaching consensus on a title for the piece proved to be challenging. The students decided to combine all their titles and call the sculpture “Untitled; Untitled III; Chopsticks; Awesome; Compression; Blue Balls; Two Standing; One Sitting; Please Sit; Take a Load Off; Compress Me; Finals//Exhaustion; Drill Baby Drill; #Public; Touch Me; 4 Degrees; (Glass) Shards; Three Students; Let’s Vote; #DenzerNation; Princess Di; Giant Poet; Anne-Elise; Freed Me; Antonia (much thanks to Antonio); Ji-Hold Me Tight; Ryan-bot; Three Little Pigs; Three Blind Mice; The Holy Trinity; Three Finger; Three’s A Crowd; Gangsta Lean; Don’t Pee On This Sculpture; Free Advice; Three Advice; Lean On Me; Outdoor Furniture; Outdoor Future; P=NP?; #Reunions13; Emergence.”
The students involved in the creation of the new work include undergraduates Ben Denzer, Jiho Lee, Diana Li, Elise Rise and Nicolas Schmidt, along with graduate students in the School of Architecture, Michal Koszycki, Ryan Johns and Antonia Weiss.
More information is online at princeton.edu/arts.
