BY OWEN FINDSEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Patricia Renick, holding a model of "30 Module Sphere 1," the sculpture she did for Central Parkway, sits in front of another of her works.
(Yoni Pozner photo)
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A cluster of artists' studios tucked away in a corner of the West End is getting its own gateway.
Cincinnati artist Patricia Renick has created an 11-foot-high stainless steel sculpture for Central Parkway to mark the new entrance to the neighborhood of Brighton. "30 Module Sphere 1" will stand at the intersection of the parkway and a new street connector leading to Central Avenue.
The area is a triangle, squeezed between Central Parkway and Interstate 75. The expressway cut across Colerain Avenue, severing the first few blocks of Brighton from the rest of the neighborhood. Central Avenue ends at a fragment of Harrison Avenue. Factories and shops closed; houses stood empty.
"This was once a thriving community," Ms. Renick says, "but it died when they built I-75. That cut off a major artery into the community, so it began to disintegrate."
Now old buildings are being rehabbed for art studios and galleries.
"Artists are moving up here. There are studios, lofts. Semantics Gallery is going to open here," says Ms. Renick, a neighhborhood pioneer who has had her studio at 2159 Colerain Ave. since 1987. "I felt very strongly that it was necessary to find a way to get people in here. People got lost trying to find us. We're right next to Central Parkway, but there was no connection. Some people gave up and drove over the sidewalk.
"So I got together a petition of people who live and work in the area to ask the city to make a cut-through." subhed:Working out a solution body:
It has taken a couple of years, but Ms. Renick got her connector, a short street between Central Parkway and Central Avenue near the Brighton overpass. And because the design included a small triangular traffic island, it was an ideal spot for a large sculpture.
"The city engineers asked me if I could create something for the spot. I said I would do it, and I would take no commission, but I could only do it if my work was accepted into the Pier Walk show in Chicago."
Which leads to the second part of the story: the sculpture itself. Ms. Renick had already submitted a maquette (small model) to Pier Walk '98 before being approached to create something for the Brighton triangle. She was waiting to hear whether she had been accepted.
In its third year, the show displays large-scale sculpture in the outdoor areas of Chicago's Navy Pier, a convention and entertainment center. The show claims to be the world's largest outdoor sculpture exhibition.
Artists are invited to submit maquettes; the best are asked to create work for the show. This year Ms. Renick and 174 other sculptors were invited to exhibit. (Other Cincinnati sculptors in the show are Robert Fry and Derrick Woodham.)
Now she had to find the money to make the art.
Artistic background
Ms. Renick has been teaching sculpture at the University of Cincinnati for 30 years. She was co-organizer of the International Woman's Sculpture Conference, held in Cincinnati in 1987. In May, she was appointed to the executive committee of the International Sculpture Center, Washington, D.C.
Large scale sculpture is expensive. Most sculptors make a maquette, hoping to find funding for the full-scale work. With city funding for the Central Parkway project, Ms. Renick planned to create the work, show it for six months in Chicago, then install it permanently on Central Parkway.
The city authorized the connector, but nixed the sculpture. But city officials helped Ms. Renick apply for private funding from the Otto M. Budig Family Foundation. An arts patron, Mr. Budig visited Ms. Renick's studio and approved the grant.
The next step was getting the sculpture built.
Ms. Renick has made large-scale sculpture before, including her well-known "Stegowagenvolksaurus," a full-scale fiberglass combination of a Stegosaurus dinosaur and a Volkswagen bug, but her new work required expertise and equipment beyond the scope of an artist's studio.
"I learned all the skills I needed to make "Stegowagenvolksaurus' myself, but my new work is different. These new sculptures are geometric metal puzzles that require a kind of craft and skill of somebody who is extremely knowledgeable about that craft and who does it for a living.
"Fortunately, the building right behind mine is Young & Bertke (a metal fabricator accustomed to large and challenging projects). These guys are geniuses at what they do. They looked at the model and saw problems I hadn't even thought of."
Ms. Renick worked out the design on a small scale, folding 4- by 5-inch index cards.
"It's a lot like origami," she says. But scaled up to an 8-foot diameter sphere, the mathematics of the folds became incredibly complex. "They had to write a computer program to work it out, and the cuts had to be so precise they had to cut the steel with a laser beam."
:Complicated creation
The work is a large ball, made of folded steel panels, each panel creating complex triangular patterns. Each section had to be precisely cut, folded and finished. Except for the last section, all the parts were welded together from the inside.
One of the rules of the Navy Pier is that no sculpture may be bolted to the pier.
"With the kind of winds they get there, the sculpture could easily have blown over," Ms. Renick says, "but the workers at Young & Bertke had a simple solution. They made the base water tight, with fill and drain holes, so we could weight the base with water and antifreeze, and drain it when we move it."
With the Budig grant and services donated by others, the cost of the sculpture stands at about $20,000, Ms. Renick says.
"I'm pleased that all the work could be done right here in Brighton." It took a flat bed truck to move the work to Chicago and a crane to place it. The exhibition, which opened in May in conjunction with the Navy Pier Show, an international convention of art dealers, continues through Oct. 22.
The last step: Ms. Renick will offer to donate her work to the city.
City Council must vote to accept the gift, but that's thought to be a formality.
The sculpture will be installed by mid-November, but Ms. Renick won't leave it at that.
"There is room there for more than one sculpture. I'd like to see another permanent installation by another artist, and a series of temporary installations of other works of art."
