Ladies of Steel, an installation of four sculptures by Judith Peck, is now on display at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, highlighting International Women’s Day (March 8) and Women’s History Month. The exhibit remains through August 2023. The park is located on East 47th Street between 2nd Avenue and UN Plaza (1st Ave), Manhattan.
“Steel is strong but malleable; it can bend,” states the artist. First she sketches, then cuts and shapes steel sheets with a welding torch.
Of her piece “River Flow,” Peck notes,“I like to think of the sculpture like a woman, relaxed in its soft curves but confident, even with its internal divisions, to make the journey, go with the flow. ”
She sees whimsy in all four “ladies.” The figure with her arm extended walks a dog on a leash. Peck left the dog out to be imagined or filled by real pets. Photographer Jon Scarlet captured the first pooches to pose in Dag Plaza.
Peck’s work is wide-ranging in its diversity and use of mediums, which include bronze, stone and wood. A Professor Emeritus of Art at Ramapo (State) College, during her 42 year tenure, Dr. Peck instituted an on-going program training college students to conduct art workshops in jails, homes for abused children, psychiatric centers, domestic violence shelters and nursing homes. A prolific author, Art and Social Interaction was recently released by Routledge Publishers along with a second book for parents and elementary school teachers, Dynamic Play and Creative Movement: Powering Body and Brain.
Sherrill Kazan, president of Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, worked with NYC Parks Senior Public Arts Coordinator Elizabeth Masella and Shamina de Gonzaga, executive editor of Centerpoint Now for World Council of Peoples for the United Nations (WCPUN), to bring the exhibit to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza under the Art in the Parks program of NYC Parks & Recreation.
For more about Judith Peck’s sculpture,
For more about Judith Peck’s books,
For more information, contact fdhp@hammarskjoldplaza.org.