Governor's Island sits in the East River smack dab between Brooklyn, Manhattan, New Jersey, Ellis Island and Staten Island. Following Brooklyn's original promenade, Atlantic Avenue, to the water, I sailed across to the former military stronghold on the free ferry provided by the park service, where many New Yorkers are found bike-riding, picnicking and generally enjoying the days of summer. How lovely to see di Suvero's dynamic steel formations adding to the composition of this city dwellers' getaway playground.
"I like to do interactive work. I really believe that the piece needs to be all the way around you. We see in about 210 degrees, but you feel what there is at the very edge of vision. A painting, unless it's a panorama, is an object in the distance. And you look through a frame. With sculpture, you can get inside of it. It gives you a different kind of a feeling. The journalists at Governor's Island, during the preview, asked me: 'What are you doing with your work?' And I told them: 'I'm creating orgasmic space. You don't know it until you feel it. So you have to walk inside the piece.' And the next thing I knew, all of them were climbing inside of the work." Mark di Suvero in Art in America Magazine
