Client: Lexarts Inc

Overview

This project, a collaboration between this year’s Leadership Lexington class and LexArts, is intended to give the community a head start on gaining more public art. The Leadership Lexington group published a formal Request for Qualifications for artists desiring to create a permanent, public work in downtown Lexington. From approximately 140 submissions, 5 finalists were invited to prepare proposals for sites dowtown, “Concordia” was the first commissioned from this group.

Goals

“Concordia” negotiates two formerly distinct structures that form a plinth for the sculpture in the corner formed by the roof and the wall. Much in the same way that Lexarts augments, strengthens and shoulders the larger community, the form of the sculpture references the buttress, an external support meant to shore up, reinforce and sustain the structure it leans against; both necessary and dependent on each other, in a communal relationship.

Process

The rooftop site presented interesting physical and procedural challenges, which required extensive consultation with building architects, engineers, fabricators and riggers as well as skillful guidance and negotiations with client, city agencies and neighborhood development design groups.