New large-scale installation of ringing bells to open at Brooklyn Bridge Park
Photos: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund NY
A new art installation featuring five giant bells in 14-foot-tall structures will open at Brooklyn Bridge Park this week. Created by San Francisco-based artist Davina Semo, Reverberation allows visitors to ring each bell, drilled with a variety of holes to produce different tones and pitch. The exhibition, curated by the Public Art Fund, will be on view at the waterfront park from August 20 through April 18, 2021.
The installation’s large-scale bronze bells, which have been painted hot orange to evoke alarm and serve as a call-to-action, symbolize the historic, maritime need to ring bells as well as the nightly cheers thanking New York City essential workers during the height of the pandemic and the chanting of protestors over racial justice and police reform.
According to the Public Art Fund, Semo created the bells by sculpting a wax model first and then turning that into a mold. She drilled a variety of compositions of holes in each wax bell to alter both its appearance and sound. The bells were then cast in bronze and painted with pearlescent orange paint.
“Semo’s bells become a distinctive and democratized mode of public address that allows art to communicate in profound ways,” Daniel S. Palmer, Public Art Fund curator, said in a press release. “They give us an opportunity to raise our voices and unite with each other, at a moment when human connection and empathy have become so precious.”
Visitors are encouraged to interact with the installation and the different tones of the five bells, which are titled Reflector, Singer, Dreamer, Listener, and Mother. The chains will be sanitized regularly, but visitors should sanitizer before and after interacting with the artwork.
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Davina Semo, Reverberation, 2020; Presented by Public Art Fund at Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 1, August 20-April 18, 2021, Courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. Photos: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund NY
