The Art Office

Downtown Oklahoma City has a brand new sculpture in their public art collection by Phillip K. Smith, III!

Last week the 26-foot tall, 4-foot diameter steel tower got packed up, loaded on a truck for its journey from Indio, and was installed in the park in front of City Hall. Thanks to careful planning and extraordinary fabrication by our friends at White’s Steel and new friends at Wynn Construction serving as the installation crew, the four segments of the piece were unloaded, unpacked, and precisely installed at the site in only a few hours! Special thanks to Rusty and his crew from Wynn for their skill, precision, and enthusiasm.

The piece is within sight of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, which hosted Phillip for an informal talk about the sculpture held on the Museum’s roof deck on Thursday evening. An image noting Where the Earth and the Sky Meet made the Metro section of The Oklahoman, OKC’s lead newspaper the next day, and Phillip was also interviewed by a local television station, which will be edited and broadcast soon.

Thanks to Whitney Cross of the OKC Museum of Art, Kristy Yager from the City, and particularly to Robbie Kienzle, the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs Liason, who was very helpful in coordinating publicity and getting the word out!

The many facets of the piece as it rises into the skyline are increasingly covered with mirror-polished stainless steel, which gives a range of reflections, from clouds, the spectrum of the colorful sky, and also from trees and the different surrounding buildings of the downtown plaza. Moving around the piece, as well as viewing it from different vantage points in nearby buildings, really brings out the changes in color and shimmer from the reflective faces. It’s also fun to see that the detailed renderings, done by Burzeen Contractor throughout the design process, are remarkably true to the photos of the actual, completed sculpture.

It was especially rewarding to see that people from the community were taking their pictures with the new sculpture by the next morning after installation!

The precast concrete base ring and lights will be installed (both in-ground at the base and inside the piece, which will wash colored light up through the voids), and the park's landscape will be renovated in Spring 2013, so stay tuned for updated photos, and also visit the www.PKS3.com website.