On Friday, Rochester gets a chance to meet the quartet of internationally-recognized artists bringing new artwork to the Peace Plaza.

From noon to 1:15 p.m. on Friday in Les Fields Hall at Castle Community, 121 North Broadway, members of the redesign team, as well as the artists commissioned to contribute work to the space, will present their work-in-progress to the public. Their talk will be preceded by an open house from 11 a.m. to noon; the open house will continue again from 1:15 to 2:3o p.m.

As we reported back in May, the plaza’s redesign aims to address accessibility, sustainability, and pedestrian safety. The entire project comes with a $15 million price tag; the art component makes up $3 million of that. Because it is a Destination Medical Center-led project, the city is not being asked to put city levy tax dollars into the project.

In addition to new works and features being added to the plaza, Peace Fountain, a 10-foot tall column of 57 doves en route to the skies, will get an upgrade. And, since the redesign team included artists early on, the alterations are being done with maximum respect to the original art in the space, according to Hesse McGraw, the art curator for Heart of the City.

“It’s been a real goal, at least since I’ve been involved in the project, that the fountain would be honored, and in fact elevated. I think both literally and figuratively,” McGraw said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

The team worked with Gagnon’s widow, arts educator Arlyn Gagnon, to gain further insight into Peace Fountain’s original design. During that process they learned, for instance, that the way the water now flows from the fountain is not how Gagnon intended. His vision was to see water cascading down the doves. The redesign will set that right, said McGraw.

“Anytime you’re sort of rehabilitating, or upgrading a work, it’s really important to have the ability to have that direct conversation,” he said.

Though the fountain remains a focal point of the plaza, the new works by four high-caliber artists will help the space attain its goal of making every visit to the plaza unique. The four artists whose work will join Gagnon’s are Eric Anderson (Rochester), Ann Hamilton (Columbus, Ohio), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (Montreal), and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Chicago).

McGraw, based in Kansas City, said the redesign marks a new frontier for art, which is usually created out of nowhere, for creative expression. Here, the artists are teamed up with the city to advance a civic mission.

They brought the artists onto the design team, but also into direct collaboration with DMC Economic Development Agency and the City of Rochester. Normally, says McGraw, art is a later-phase consideration, meant to adorn the space. By the time artists are invited onto a project, the design of the place is typically complete. For Heart of the City, however, the artists were brought in early and asked to consider what kind of experience visitors would have, and what the Peace Plaza is all about — rather than focusing solely on the meaning and presentation of their own work.

“I think the unique thing about this project is the way in which the team has worked together in service of a large set of goals and questions about what's possible for Peace Plaza itself,” said McGraw. “I think that the artists have responded to that in a really beautiful way.”

Hamilton’s work is known for exploring the connection between text and texture. (You can find Hamilton’s work at the subway terminal by the World Trade Center in New York City.) Her piece for Rochester, Aeon, features letters carved into Cold Spring granite in an attempt to make viewers consider Rochester in history and how we interact with the passage of time.

Artist’s rendering, Ann Hamilton, Aeon, proposal for Heart of the City – Peace Plaza. Courtesy of the artist and Destination Medical Center.

Lozano-Hemmer’s work strives to make spaces more democratic in nature. His work in Peace Plaza involves lighting and a recording system that will allow visitors to speak into an intercom and “see their voice illustrated through an overhead lighting network” (shown in cover photo).

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle aims to “put sculpture to work,” a nod to the civic-minded basis for the project. His contribution is the most conventional of the four works. Titled A Not So Private Sky, Manglano-Ovalle’s sculpture is a response to the restored Peace Fountain. He did an exhibition at the Rochester Art Center in 2006, and feels an affinity for the fountain, its form, and the verticality of it, especially. He started thinking about the visual axis the fountain creates, and how to extend that toward the Gonda.

Artist’s rendering, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, A Not So Private Sky, proposal for Heart of the City – Peace Plaza. Courtesy of the artist and Destination Medical Center.

Anderson’s Wakefield is an evolved form of his 2016 project,The Artery (currently on display at The Castle). It, like much of his recent work, seeks to highlight moments of beauty in an age of big data. Using fog and light, Wakefield will signal real-time health events happening at Mayo Clinic. First and last breaths will be marked in distinct ways, as a way for the community-at-large to reflect on the work being done by the city’s incredible network of healthcare workers. It also acknowledges the quasi-chaotic momentum of real life. If successful, his work will help visitors to the plaza “consider what it means to be present in our own lives and in the lives of others," said Anderson.

“I want to create work this is unstable, dynamic, rude, lawless and joyous. I believe these aims to steer the process of creating away from closure, allowing the work to become something larger, more generous or more humble than an initial idea or easily definable deliverable,” said Anderson.

Artist’s rendering, Eric Anderson, Wakefield, proposal for Heart of the City – Peace Plaza. Courtesy of the artist and Destination Medical Center.

(Friday is a busy day for Anderson, who in addition to his Heart of the City work, will open his solo exhibition at the Art Center, titled Fantasy for Eleven Fingers, which uses custom artificial intelligence frameworks to augment and inspire traditional artmaking practices. Think big oil paintings composed by a computer program but painted by an expert human hand.)

Construction on the Peace Plaza redesign is slated to begin in 2020. It will be the first phase in the Heart of the City project, which has been an early focal point of the DMC initiative. Additional information on the project can be found on the Heart of the City website.

Bryan Lund covers politics and culture for the Med City Beat.

Cover photo: Artist’s rendering, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Voice Canopy, proposal for Heart of the City – Peace Plaza. Courtesy of the artist and Destination Medical Center. (Charles E. Gagnon’s Peace Fountain in the foreground.)