Tufts Unveils 2 New Public Art Projects

The Tufts University Art Gallery at the Aidekman Arts Center is proud to announce the arrival of two new outdoor works of art on the Tufts campus as part of the Gallery’s temporary public art series and its new Museum Without Walls web app. Explore these and other works of art through stories, images, and videos that prompt you to look closely and linger with a work you may have passed by but never really looked at. Visit http://tuftsart.toursphere.com or look for signage.

Sited in a planter bed on a pedestrian walkway just downhill from the Tisch Library, French sculptor Quentin Garel’s Autruche II (Ostrich II), 2010, greets visitors to campus and passersby in an unexpected way. Standing six feet high, this sculpture upends the expression “burying one’s head in the sand.” Walking past the raised bed, visitors are confronted and surprised by an ostrich’s head looming above them, its body presumably buried in the planter bed.

This disquieting yet humorous sculpture is not what it appears to be. Garel’s sculptural process begins as large charcoal drawings that are made and erased repeatedly, creating a palimpsest from which he carves models in wood and then casts in bronze. The unique patinas of his bronzes reflect the wood grain of the models; these lines make his sculptural surfaces look like drawings, create a sense of sinuous movement and depth. This work is on loan to Tufts for one year, courtesy of the Bertrand Delacroix Gallery, New York, NY. Quentin Garel lives and works in Normandy, France.

Graffiti artist ABBY TC-5 was invited by the Tufts University Art Gallery to create a site-specific mural for the large “art wall” adjacent to the Mayer Campus Center on Talbot Avenue. The mural, titled Summer in New York, interprets the 2007 play “Welcome to Arroyo’s” by Obie Award-winner and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Kristoffer Diaz, being directed by Tufts Assistant Professor Noe Montez for the Balch Arena Theater this fall (Oct 17-19, 24-26). This bold and colorful public art work references the play’s main themes: the role of women, especially Latinas, in the worlds of hip hop, graffiti, and MCing, as well as the gentrification of New York’s Lower East Side, where the play is set in 2004. ABBY TC-5 has also been invited to contribute to the scenic design for the Tufts production of this play.

ABBY TC-5 is part of the graffiti collective “The Crazy 5” and one of the few women artists who originally made a name for herself tagging in the Bronx, subsequently creating murals in the San Francisco Bay Area, and now in Charlotte, NC.

ABBY TC-5 will appear at a lunchtime conversation with Noe Montez on Friday, October 25. ABBY’s visit is sponsored by a grant from the Nat R. and Martha Knaster Charitable Trust.

– Information and photos from Tufts University