Outdoor Sculpture

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOBSTER ROLL IN OKLAHOMA CITY
The Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center is on the move after spending a quarter century at the state fairgrounds in Oklahoma City. The architectural firm of Elliott and Associates has been tapped to design a new campus on four-and-a-half acres in Automobile Alley just north of OKC’s downtown. Even before that, however, Oklahoma Contemporary is making a colorful statement in its new neighbor- hood with artist, weaver, and “rope wrangler” Orly Genger’s latest massive, brightly hued sculpture, Terra, unveiled this past fall and on view through October 2015.

Incorporating 1.4 million feet of recycled lobster-fishing rope (her preferred medium) and 350 gallons of deep orange paint, Genger’s neat stacks of crocheted ropes snake across the ground, curving around trees, and creating undulating hills in the flat park. The work encourages visitors to experience the park differently as they move through and around the sculpture. “When visiting Oklahoma I was tak- en by the vastness of the open landscape and envisioned a line that would travel in continual motion winding through the patch of land,” Genger says. She goes on to explain that the term “red dirt” inspired her color choice, which, she says, “relates both to the clay-like na- ture of the earth, and to the bricks with which we build walls.” Indeed an appropriate motif to presage the creation of the new arts center. oklahomacontemporary.org