June 8

ANGOLA — There's some new sights to see downtown.

"Sculptures Angola" brought four new creations to the heart of the city on June 3. The pieces replaced the 2022 installations and began their year-long display.

Placed in all four quadrants of the Public Square, this year's lineup of artists consisted of students from the Impact Institute's welding program, Greg Summers, Maureen Gray and Gregory Mendez. Each sculpture brings its own flare and meaning to downtown's quadrants.

"Welcome," by Summers and sponsored by Cameron Memorial Hospital offers viewers the chance to consider the connection between "we" and "me."

"With (the word) ‘welcome,’ it incorporated both," Summers said. "In the scope of human events, the ‘we’ has outweighed the ‘me.’"

The city is the first home for the steel sculpture, which helped to partially influence Summers’ direction of the piece.

"It started out monochrome, like black and gray, but it didn't give that festive feeling," Summers said. "I did the purple and gold specially for Angola colors."

When the Mayor's Art Council chose the piece, they intentionally placed it in the southeast quadrant downtown so that that heart on top of ‘lco’ could frame the Steuben County Soldiers’ Monument.

Summers is a veteran of the "Sculptures Angola" juried exhibition and other public art contests around the area. During his career as an artist, he has continued to make pieces on his own. For "Welcome," Summers had been working on the creation for roughly one year.

He motioned to the sculpture and explained that in the ending ‘E’, there were 13 pieces of metal that went into only that one letter.

Just north of Summers’ creation, Mendez brought his own style to 2023's public art display. Simply replacing his sculpture from 2022's exhibit, the artist presented "Daphne" sponsored by LINKS Creative Alliance. The female figure is made entirely, with exception to the base, out of stock steel rods.

Bending the rods into serpentine curves, Mendez built from the ground up and the middle out. Once the form began taking shape, he went through a grinding process to get rid of any sharp edges throughout the piece and to help highlight distinguished features like the face.

"That's something really important with public art that differs from art that can be seen in galleries. In the gallery, you often see signs that say, ‘don't touch the art,’" Mendez said. "Public art is the exact opposite, you expect people to come up and run their hand over it, see what the finish looks like."

The artist then went through an additive and subtractive process to get everything just right. Mendez's body of work has consisted of figurative sculptures, which show interpretations of the human form. He sees these pieces as creating a foundational understanding for viewers so they can focus on considering the art's personal meaning to them.

For "Daphne" specifically, Mendez took inspiration from the Greek mythology tale where Apollo fell in love with the forest dryad. She didn't want to leave the forest so she asked to be turned into a tree.

"This sculpture kind of depicts the transformation of Daphne into a laurel tree and so across the top of her head, you’ll see a crown of purple flowers and those are kind of symbolic of the (laurel) flowers," Mendez said. "The lines kind of create movement starting from the ground up and she almost looks like she's kind of twisting and transforming into a tree."

Unlike "Welcome," "Daphne" has been displayed all over the country including South Dakota, Iowa and more.

"I want to thank the city of Angola for supporting public art and allowing artists, regional artists, the opportunity to display their work in a downtown setting, it doesn't get much better (than that)," Mendez said.

The other two sculptures, "Sunflower" by students from the Impact Institute's welding program and sponsored by the Steuben County Tourism Bureau and "Almost Infinity" by Gray and sponsored by Univertical, can be viewed on the northwestern and southwestern quadrants.

This year's installation will be replaced next June. Inquiries can be made to the artists about the ability to purchase the pieces.

Some previous works have remained in the community through private purchases.

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