E-mail this

Printer-friendly

Subscribe

RSS feeds

Art project finally sees the light

By Sara Pearce
Enquirer staff writer

The Enquirer/Michael E. Keating Steel riggers install the Crystalline Tower on Monday at the Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park.

More photos: • Photos: Crystalline Tower

ABOUT THE PARK

What: Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park. Where: 1101 Eastern Ave., along the Ohio River about 1 mile east of downtown. Background: The 20-acre park is named for Cincinnati's first African-American mayor Theodore M. Berry, who served from December 1972 to November 1975. The park was designed in the 1990s. It opened in May 2003. Features: Bike trails, gardens and meadows, winding walkways, an earth sculpture, a pavilion, plaza and serpentine-shaped sitting wall. Public art: Welsh sculptor David Nash's "Seven Vessels Ascending/Descending," a circle of carved oak monoliths aligned to the sun and commissioned by the park board; "Castle of Air," by German architect Peter Haimerl, a polished stainless steel piece designed as a contemporary interpretation of an 18th-century European hunting lodge that was donated by the city of Munich; "Clay Color and Fire," mosaics created by artists from each of Cincinnati's seven Sister Cities; the new "Crystalline Tower," a second commissioned piece by artists Susan Ewing of Oxford and Vratislav Novak of Prague, Czech Republic.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Enquirer/Michael E. Keating Artist Susan Ewing holds the gold-leaf topper to the 90-foot tall Crystalline Tower as she prepares to deliver it to installers on Monday. Ewing and Czech artist Vratislav Novak designed the stainless steel, mica and titanium structure.

Four years after being selected as the winner in an international sculpture competition and two years after it was supposed to be installed, the 83-foot high Crystalline Tower was lowered into place Monday morning on the eastern tip of Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park.

The triangular titanium, mica and stainless steel tower glistened in the morning sun as it dangled from three cables on a crane. Suddenly, the slender column rotated and the side with mica panels shone silvery-white.

Susan Ewing gasped and reached for her camera. "I missed it," she said. "Wow, just look at it."

She stood still for a moment, staring up at the jewel-like sculpture that she and Czech artist Vratislav Novak designed.

Ewing and Novak met through an exchange program. Ewing, a professor who is head of the metals department at Miami University's School of Fine Arts, was a Fulbright scholar teaching metalsmithing in Prague, Czech Republic, from 1997 to 1999.

This was the first U.S. commission for Novak, who is known in Europe for his kinetic sculptures.

The pair selected different materials for each side of the tower: Mica to represent fire, titanium for wind and stainless steel for water.

Novak was in Cincinnati for two months during the summer working with Ewing on the piece, along with a handful of Miami University graduate students, who also spent the weekend at the site attaching hundreds of the titanium and mica panels to the tower.

The park's theme of friendship is picked up in a 30-inch aluminum star sheathed in 24-carat gold leaf.

It is attached to a moving arm atop the tower and hinged so it spins. It symbolizes the North Star, which many slaves used to navigate their way to freedom.

"It's small," Ewing said. "We wanted it to be like a spark."

The narrow 20-acre park is set between railroad tracks and the river in a series of links that Ewing, who specializes in jewelry making, likens to a friendship bracelet.

Originally, a sheet of water was to run slowly down the steel side into a reflecting pool, and visitors were to cross a Japanese-style bridge and enter the tower where they could ascend a spiral staircase whose shape was modeled on a strand of DNA.

The plan was scrapped, partly because of extra costs and partly because of access problems for those with disabilities. There is an internal staircase, but it is accessible to park employees only.

Ewing hopes that water will be added later. "There are pipes in place, so it's possible some day," Ewing pointed out. "It's still a dream."

The tower is secured to pilings tied into the bedrock.

"This park might disappear, but this tower will still be standing," said Ewing, alluding to recent erosion problems that required shoring up sections of the park.

The sculpture is the second of two works commissioned for the park, said Steve Schuckman, Cincinnati Parks' superintendent for design and planning. "It's a nice high-tech counterbalance to David Nash's wooden sculpture," he said, referring to the circle of enormous, singed oak pillars that the Welsh artist designed for a spot a few hundred feet west of the tower.

Nash's piece was unveiled in spring 2003, and the tower was expected to follow in the fall.

But a fight over funding almost put the kibosh on the project and delayed it. Escalating costs drove the final price to $400,000, twice the amount budgeted by the park board. Ewing raised the extra $200,000 needed, securing grants - including a $15,800 matching grant from the Ohio Arts Council - and donations from businesses, foundations and individuals.

She has never created a piece this large before.

"We had to custom tool a lot of it, drill all the holes in the stainless steel for the mesh, design clips to hold the mica and titanium panels," she said.

"We had to learn new ways of working and of production; there was a lot of hand production."

Now that it's done, she has just one thing in mind.

"I am anxious to get back to my jeweler's bench and make small pieces."

E-mail spearce@enquirer.com and read her art blog at http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/art/