Artist’s Statement
“Why do we give flowers? The act can convey love, celebrate accomplishments, offer comfort in grief, repay hospitality, or simply beautify a space and bring personal joy. Beyond their universal appeal, flowers carry diverse cultural meanings: from the imbued spiritual symbolism of the lotus flower, to the holiday tradition of poinsettias, and the association of roses with love. Across time and space, flowers reflect one’s connection to community and to one another. Nature gifts us flowers, a spontaneous eruption of beauty that brings joy and wonder, and in return we offer them to one another.“It is in this spirit that I offer the city Broadway Blooms, a series of eight marble sculptures in the form of flowers." Carved in Bardiglio Imperiale, Calacatta Gold, Verde Rameggiato, Fantastico Arni, Rosso Cardinale, Breccia Viola, and Rosa Portogallo marble, the blooms will be installed for a nine-month period in New York City at eight major intersections along Broadway starting at 64th Street (Dante Park/Lincoln Center), then 72nd, 79th, 96th, 103rd, 117th, 148th, ending at 157th Street.“I chose blooms for Broadway in part because imagery is accessible to the many people that navigate these intersections in their daily lives. They are imbued with a universal symbolism, and can create wonder and joy in their discovery. Placing them in a series of locations across neighborhoods, I hope to promote a sense of interconnectedness in a space that can otherwise feel impersonal, anonymous, and alienating. The natural forms offer visual and psychological relief from the roads, traffic, and architecture in which they are situated – sites of beauty and respite from the built environment.“Broadway Blooms represents the next development of my ongoing artistic dialogue with form, technology, and the associative sensations of imagery and shape. In my work, forms are compressed, distorted, or squeezed and made more intimate by subtle adjustments of scale. Carved lines contour the surface to emphasize the forms’ growth, create the illusion of expansiveness and provoke associations of patterning, layering and veiled imagery.“Flowers fascinate us in part because of their delicacy and ephemerality; by transposing their fragile forms into marble, the oldest and most durable of sculptural materials, I hope to inspire viewers to pause and wonder at the productive tension generated by the delicate form and impermeable material. Like real flowers, my installation on Broadway will be ephemeral, but I hope that my artistic offering to the city will be remembered long after the sculptures themselves have moved on.”
Eight sculptures, depicting various gigantic blooming flowers, give viewers the chance to interact with public art, and with each other.
Along New York’s Upper West Side, as the temperature drops and leaves begin to fall and blend into the cityscape, flowers are in permanent bloom on Broadway.
Eight sculptures by the artist Jon Isherwood have been placed along the green malls that interlace Broadway, from Lincoln Square to up to Washington Heights, in an instillation that brings fully blooming, life-sized flowers carved out of marble to the streets of upper Manhattan.
The blooming flora are large enough to passers-by to sit in. A Gift Between Two, which was placed outside a subway station on 72nd Street and Broadway, consists of two flowers slightly facing each other so that people can sit and recline, perhaps even strike up a conversation. To the artist, flowers are universal, accepted and appreciated by everyone. The eight sculptures, in turn, are meant to act as a bridge between communities, and span over four miles of New York’s most famous through-way, linking desperate neighbourhoods and sparking conversation.
“I chose blooms for Broadway in part because imagery is accessible to the many people that navigate these intersections in their daily lives. They are imbued with a universal symbolism and can create wonder and joy in their discovery. Placing them in a series of locations across neighbourhoods, I hope to promote a sense of interconnectedness in a space that can otherwise feel impersonal, anonymous, and alienating,” Isherwood says.
These marble flowers begin at Dante Park, on 64th Street and Broadway. The final bloom sits almost 100 blocks away, in Ilka Tanya Payán Park on Broadway and 157th Street and all are presented by the Broadway Mall Association, which before this has presented twelve public art exhibitions along Broadway. Carved in expressive, colourful Bardiglio Imperiale, Calacatta Gold, Verde Rameggiato, Fantastico Arni, Rosso Cardinale, Breccia Viola, and Rosa Portogallo marble, the sculptures will be on view until the Spring of 2022.
-Daniel Cassady
22 October 2021
About Jon Isherwood
