A Summer at Socrates Sculpture Park
Notes from working outdoors in New York — wind, weather, and sculpture that has to survive the public.
Working at Socrates Sculpture Park changed how I think about scale and exposure. Suddenly the studio had no walls. The work stood in the open, against the East River and the Manhattan skyline, and it had to hold its own against all of it.
Outdoor sculpture is unforgiving. Weather gets a vote. Wind, rain, and the slow chemistry of the air all keep working on the piece long after you have stepped away. Copper actually loves this — it patinas, it shifts colour, it becomes more itself over time. The park finishes what the hammer starts.
The other change is the audience. In a gallery, people come to look at art. In a public park, they come to walk the dog, to sit, to eat lunch — and the sculpture has to earn their attention without a label or a quiet room. That pressure is good for the work. It strips away anything that only makes sense to insiders.
I came back to Antwerp with bigger ambitions and a deeper respect for objects that have to live outside, in the world, with everybody.