Parallel Park, 2010
Artworks: Installation
http://www.marylyndintenfass.com/
Marylyn Dintenfass is an internationally-recognized artist whose work is found in public and private collections in Italy, Denmark, Israel, Japan and the United States. More than 30 public collections hold her work including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, Museum of Fine Art in Houston, the Flint Institute of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She has been featured in more than a dozen solo exhibitions across the Unites States, including the Queens Museum of Art, the Katonah Museum, the Mississippi Museum of Art (an exhibition underwritten by the Andy Warhol Foundation) and the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery on the Lee campus of Edison State College in Fort Myers.
Modern Painters includes Dintenfass' 2012-2013 solo exhibition at New York's venerable Driscoll Babcock Gallery in their 2012 "100 Best Fall Shows Worldwide." Dr. John Driscoll asserts that the vibrant abstracts in Drop Dead Gorgeous "reaffirm [Dintenfass'] position as a significant figure in the rich tradition of Colorists who explore the potent and evocative union of representation and abstraction - figures like James Turrell, Richard Diebenkorn, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin."
In addition to solo exhibitions, Dintenfass has participated in more than 60 international group exhibitions since the 1970s. Twice, Dintenfass has been a MacDowell Fellow and she has received both an individual Artist Fellowship Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and two project grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the Silver Medal at the First International, Mino, Japan, and the Ravenna Prize at the 45th Faenza International in Italy. Marylyn Dintenfass has also been a visiting professor at academic institutions in Canada, Norway, Holland and Israel, and for 10 years was a member of the faculty at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. A monograph of her work, Marylyn Dintenfass Paintings, was recently published by Hudson Hills Press.
As a public artist, Dintenfass has completed 26 large-scale public art installations including the 42nd Street Bus Terminal at the New York Port Authority, the State of Connecticut Superior Courthouse, the Baltimore Federal Financial Building, IBM’s offices in Atlanta, Charlotte and San Jose, Ben Gurion University in Israel and Tagimi Middle School in Japan. Her 30,000-square-foot site specific Parallel Park installation on the Lee County Justice Center Parking Garage in Fort Myers, Florida is one of the largest and most noteworthy public art projects of the last ten years, and its making is memorialised by author Aliza Edelman in a 140-page monograph titled Marylyn Dintenfass Parallel Park.
An experiential artist, Dintenfass operates from the premise that art is interactive and its interpretation is therefore influenced by the viewer’s experiences, perspective and how they connect with the motif.
www.bsswarchitects.com
Parallel Park was the brainchild of Kevin Williams of BSSW Architects, who opted to use art panels consisting of open-weave Kevlar fabric to comply with a building ordinance that requires that cars in a parking garage be obscured from public view.
"The architect was pretty clever," says Sharon McAllister, who chaired the City of Fort Myers Public Art Committee at the time. "He could have just put trellises on [the parking garage] and grown bougainvillea, but he didn't. He said let's put artwork on it. Actual artwork from a known artist."
The challenge was to find a fabric that could serve as a support for artwork while still allowing the free flow of cleansing air into and out of the structure. “I was familiar with the [Kevlar and fiberglass] material from Europe, where they use it in historical preservation,” Williams explains. “The saw tooth pattern of the tubular attachments holds the panels on even in high winds, facilitates air circulation and ventilation inside the structure, and permits people to view the artwork up close as well as from a distance.”
Williams is a principal and vice-president of BSSW Architects, Inc., which is the largest architectural firm headquartered in Southwest Florida. With offices in Fort Myers and Naples, BSSW has built a reputation for innovation and performance backed by consideration of each project’s surroundings and respect for client budgets and schedules.
Over a career spanning more than two decades, Williams himself has assembled a widely varied portfolio that has dramatically impacted the architectural landscape of Southwest Florida. In the public domain, his innovative design style has found expression in numerous governmental projects that include the Fort Myers-Lee County Regional Library in downtown Fort Myers, Northwest Regional Library in Cape Coral, Lakes Regional Library in South Fort Myers, East Regional Library in Lehigh Acres, the Lee County Justice Center, the Lee County Justice Center Parking Garage, and the Emergency Operations Centers in both Fort Myers and LaBelle.
Williams has also collaborated with clients in the educational sector, completing designs for elementary, pre-K and college facilities that include Kleist Health Education Facility, Whitaker Science Math and Technology Building and Egin Observatory at Florida Gulf Coast University; the New Nursing Annex, Kenneth P. Walker Health Science Hall, Gresham Hall Emergency Medical Training Laboratory and Child Development Center on the Lee campus of Edison State College; and remodeling projects in the Learning Resource Center and Student Services Center on Edison State College’s Naples campus.
Williams is a member of the Southwest Florida chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, Lee Trust for Historic Preservation (past vice president), Lee County Historic Preservation Board (Chairman) and City of Fort Myers Historic Preservation Commission.
Kevin received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1989.
Barbara Anderson Hill serves as a fine art consultant and advisor to municipalities, non-profit cultural institutions, collectors and artists throughout the State of Florida. In assisting her clients, she draws on more than 30 years of professional expertise as a curator, collections manager, writer, lecturer and advisor to numerous Florida art institutions.
Hill presently functions as consultant to the Fort Myers Public Art Committee, a position she also held from 2006-2010. During the latter time frame, the Committee initiated public art projects that not only culminated in the installation of Marylyn Dintenfass' Parallel Park, but Albert Paley's Naiad in the entry to the Riviera-St. Tropez Condominiums and David Black's Fire Dance in Fort Myers Centennial Park.
Hill served as Administrator of the City of Tampa’s Public Art Program from 1990-1997 and has held key leadership positions at Florida Gulf Coast Art Center in Belleair (1991-94); The von Liebig Art Center in Naples (where she was founding executive director, CEO and curator from October of 1998 to June of 2004); the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota; and the Edison-Ford Winter Estates Foundation in Fort Myers (2005-2007). In her role as advisor to myriad public art commissions, Hill has collaborated on public art projects with with such internationally-acclaimed artists as Jonathan Borofsky, Christo, Marylyn Dintenfass, and Michele Oka Doner. As an independent curator, writer and publisher, Hill has organized exhibitions for the Tampa Museum of Art, Dunedin Fine Art Center, Florida Center for Contemporary Art and Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Edison State College in Fort Myers (where she curated Theo Wujcik: A Ten Year Retrospective 2001-2011 in 2012). Over the course of her career, Hill has been a juror in more than 30 state and national art competitions.
Hill is a charter member of the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals, a non-profit service organization dedicated to the development, advancement and education of the public art field in the State of Florida. She also serves as Chair of the Mound House Advisory Board on Fort Myers Beach, and is the founder, president and CEO of Hill Fine Art Consulting in Fort Myers Beach, Florida.
Hill holds a Master of Fine Art in Sculpture from the University of South Florida and is certified by the University of Colorado in Boulder in museum management.
Marylyn DintenfassArchitect
Kevin WilliamsOwner
Lee County, FloridaProject Manager
Barbara Anderson HillHistorian
Aliza EdelmanFabricator
Jerry Banks
Artworks: Installation
Marylyn Dintenfass is an internationally-recognized artist whose work is found in public and private collections in Italy, Denmark, Israel, Japan and the United States. More than 30 public collections hold her work including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, Museum of Fine Art in Houston, the Flint Institute of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She has been featured in more than a dozen solo exhibitions across the Unites States, including the Queens Museum of Art, the Katonah Museum, the Mississippi Museum of Art (an exhibition underwritten by the Andy Warhol Foundation) and the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery on the Lee campus of Edison State College in Fort Myers.
Modern Painters includes Dintenfass' 2012-2013 solo exhibition at New York's venerable Driscoll Babcock Gallery in their 2012 "100 Best Fall Shows Worldwide." Dr. John Driscoll asserts that the vibrant abstracts in Drop Dead Gorgeous "reaffirm [Dintenfass'] position as a significant figure in the rich tradition of Colorists who explore the potent and evocative union of representation and abstraction - figures like James Turrell, Richard Diebenkorn, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin."
In addition to solo exhibitions, Dintenfass has participated in more than 60 international group exhibitions since the 1970s. Twice, Dintenfass has been a MacDowell Fellow and she has received both an individual Artist Fellowship Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and two project grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the Silver Medal at the First International, Mino, Japan, and the Ravenna Prize at the 45th Faenza International in Italy. Marylyn Dintenfass has also been a visiting professor at academic institutions in Canada, Norway, Holland and Israel, and for 10 years was a member of the faculty at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. A monograph of her work, Marylyn Dintenfass Paintings, was recently published by Hudson Hills Press.
As a public artist, Dintenfass has completed 26 large-scale public art installations including the 42nd Street Bus Terminal at the New York Port Authority, the State of Connecticut Superior Courthouse, the Baltimore Federal Financial Building, IBM’s offices in Atlanta, Charlotte and San Jose, Ben Gurion University in Israel and Tagimi Middle School in Japan. Her 30,000-square-foot site specific Parallel Park installation on the Lee County Justice Center Parking Garage in Fort Myers, Florida is one of the largest and most noteworthy public art projects of the last ten years, and its making is memorialised by author Aliza Edelman in a 140-page monograph titled Marylyn Dintenfass Parallel Park.
An experiential artist, Dintenfass operates from the premise that art is interactive and its interpretation is therefore influenced by the viewer’s experiences, perspective and how they connect with the motif.
Thomas Hall
Parallel Park was the brainchild of Kevin Williams of BSSW Architects, who opted to use art panels consisting of open-weave Kevlar fabric to comply with a building ordinance that requires that cars in a parking garage be obscured from public view.
"The architect was pretty clever," says Sharon McAllister, who chaired the City of Fort Myers Public Art Committee at the time. "He could have just put trellises on [the parking garage] and grown bougainvillea, but he didn't. He said let's put artwork on it. Actual artwork from a known artist."
The challenge was to find a fabric that could serve as a support for artwork while still allowing the free flow of cleansing air into and out of the structure. “I was familiar with the [Kevlar and fiberglass] material from Europe, where they use it in historical preservation,” Williams explains. “The saw tooth pattern of the tubular attachments holds the panels on even in high winds, facilitates air circulation and ventilation inside the structure, and permits people to view the artwork up close as well as from a distance.”
Williams is a principal and vice-president of BSSW Architects, Inc., which is the largest architectural firm headquartered in Southwest Florida. With offices in Fort Myers and Naples, BSSW has built a reputation for innovation and performance backed by consideration of each project’s surroundings and respect for client budgets and schedules.
Over a career spanning more than two decades, Williams himself has assembled a widely varied portfolio that has dramatically impacted the architectural landscape of Southwest Florida. In the public domain, his innovative design style has found expression in numerous governmental projects that include the Fort Myers-Lee County Regional Library in downtown Fort Myers, Northwest Regional Library in Cape Coral, Lakes Regional Library in South Fort Myers, East Regional Library in Lehigh Acres, the Lee County Justice Center, the Lee County Justice Center Parking Garage, and the Emergency Operations Centers in both Fort Myers and LaBelle.
Williams has also collaborated with clients in the educational sector, completing designs for elementary, pre-K and college facilities that include Kleist Health Education Facility, Whitaker Science Math and Technology Building and Egin Observatory at Florida Gulf Coast University; the New Nursing Annex, Kenneth P. Walker Health Science Hall, Gresham Hall Emergency Medical Training Laboratory and Child Development Center on the Lee campus of Edison State College; and remodeling projects in the Learning Resource Center and Student Services Center on Edison State College’s Naples campus.
Williams is a member of the Southwest Florida chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, Lee Trust for Historic Preservation (past vice president), Lee County Historic Preservation Board (Chairman) and City of Fort Myers Historic Preservation Commission.
Kevin received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1989.
Tom Hall, Art Southwest Florida
Hill presently functions as consultant to the Fort Myers Public Art Committee, a position she also held from 2006-2010. During the latter time frame, the Committee initiated public art projects that not only culminated in the installation of Marylyn Dintenfass' Parallel Park, but Albert Paley's Naiad in the entry to the Riviera-St. Tropez Condominiums and David Black's Fire Dance in Fort Myers Centennial Park.
Hill served as Administrator of the City of Tampa’s Public Art Program from 1990-1997 and has held key leadership positions at Florida Gulf Coast Art Center in Belleair (1991-94); The von Liebig Art Center in Naples (where she was founding executive director, CEO and curator from October of 1998 to June of 2004); the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota; and the Edison-Ford Winter Estates Foundation in Fort Myers (2005-2007). In her role as advisor to myriad public art commissions, Hill has collaborated on public art projects with with such internationally-acclaimed artists as Jonathan Borofsky, Christo, Marylyn Dintenfass, and Michele Oka Doner. As an independent curator, writer and publisher, Hill has organized exhibitions for the Tampa Museum of Art, Dunedin Fine Art Center, Florida Center for Contemporary Art and Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Edison State College in Fort Myers (where she curated Theo Wujcik: A Ten Year Retrospective 2001-2011 in 2012). Over the course of her career, Hill has been a juror in more than 30 state and national art competitions.
Hill is a charter member of the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals, a non-profit service organization dedicated to the development, advancement and education of the public art field in the State of Florida. She also serves as Chair of the Mound House Advisory Board on Fort Myers Beach, and is the founder, president and CEO of Hill Fine Art Consulting in Fort Myers Beach, Florida.
Hill holds a Master of Fine Art in Sculpture from the University of South Florida and is certified by the University of Colorado in Boulder in museum management.
Tom Hall, Art Southwest Florida
www.hpghickorync.com
Jerry Banks is a printer associated with HPG Performance Graphics in Hickory, North Carolina. "Most of what we do," states Jerry, "is vehicle wrapping for NASCAR, furniture trailers and tractor trailers." But all his clients, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi, are particular about color, which uniquely qualified Banks for the Parallel Park project.
To create Parallel Park, it was necessary for Banks and his HPG team to photograph, drum scan and enlarge eight of Marylyn Dintenfass' 35-inch-square oil-on-paper monotypes to ten times their original size using special digitizing software. The resulting images were then printed on massive 33’ x 22’ open-weave Kevlar and fiberglass fabric panels using archival ink coated with a protective ultraviolet screening to ensure long-life durability.
“I needed to permeate the material with a high-density application of pure color that would fully engage the viewer with my iconic automotive motifs," Dintenfass wrote in a May 2012 article for NY Arts Magazine. "I wanted to invoke movement and mobility, knowing the colors would change with the rotation of natural light from day to night and from season to season.”
"With the Kevlar, the holes are so big - one-quarter inch - that in the printing you are losing 50 percent of the color," Banks notes. "We printed strips of Kevlar 50 inches wide as tests and had to hang them up on a wall at a distance to see what they would really look like."
Because color saturation is crucial to the proper appreciation of Dintenfass' work, Banks found it necessary to do several rounds of color matching and correction directly on the press. "We were thus able to compensate for the loss of 50 percent of the Kevlar material - due to the open weave - by increasing the ink applied," adds Dintenfass. "This balanced the color's intensity and ensured faithful color hues while enhancing the installation's achival longevity."
Banks and his team had to be on hand throughout the printing process "in case a printer had a hiccup." Because the 160-foot rolls were not rolled tightly enough on their spools, the print runs had to be checked every 20-30 minutes to keep the ink from getting wiped off the Kevlar due to the material bunching or rippling and getting too close to the printer heads.
"It was challenging on many fronts to maintain the integrity of of the original artwork as it was technically enlarged and manipulated through the digital printing process," Dintenfass states. "In all, this intensified my great appreciation of the nuanced relationship between technology and art, and my respect for Jerry Banks' skills."
Banks shares Dintenfass' pride and sense of accomplishment. "You see it coming off the printer, and then to see the finished product is very satisfying!"
Jerry Banks is a printer associated with HPG Performance Graphics in Hickory, North Carolina. "Most of what we do," states Jerry, "is vehicle wrapping for NASCAR, furniture trailers and tractor trailers." But all his clients, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi, are particular about color, which uniquely qualified Banks for the Parallel Park project.
To create Parallel Park, it was necessary for Banks and his HPG team to photograph, drum scan and enlarge eight of Marylyn Dintenfass' 35-inch-square oil-on-paper monotypes to ten times their original size using special digitizing software. The resulting images were then printed on massive 33’ x 22’ open-weave Kevlar and fiberglass fabric panels using archival ink coated with a protective ultraviolet screening to ensure long-life durability.
“I needed to permeate the material with a high-density application of pure color that would fully engage the viewer with my iconic automotive motifs," Dintenfass wrote in a May 2012 article for NY Arts Magazine. "I wanted to invoke movement and mobility, knowing the colors would change with the rotation of natural light from day to night and from season to season.”
"With the Kevlar, the holes are so big - one-quarter inch - that in the printing you are losing 50 percent of the color," Banks notes. "We printed strips of Kevlar 50 inches wide as tests and had to hang them up on a wall at a distance to see what they would really look like."
Because color saturation is crucial to the proper appreciation of Dintenfass' work, Banks found it necessary to do several rounds of color matching and correction directly on the press. "We were thus able to compensate for the loss of 50 percent of the Kevlar material - due to the open weave - by increasing the ink applied," adds Dintenfass. "This balanced the color's intensity and ensured faithful color hues while enhancing the installation's achival longevity."
Banks and his team had to be on hand throughout the printing process "in case a printer had a hiccup." Because the 160-foot rolls were not rolled tightly enough on their spools, the print runs had to be checked every 20-30 minutes to keep the ink from getting wiped off the Kevlar due to the material bunching or rippling and getting too close to the printer heads.
"It was challenging on many fronts to maintain the integrity of of the original artwork as it was technically enlarged and manipulated through the digital printing process," Dintenfass states. "In all, this intensified my great appreciation of the nuanced relationship between technology and art, and my respect for Jerry Banks' skills."
Banks shares Dintenfass' pride and sense of accomplishment. "You see it coming off the printer, and then to see the finished product is very satisfying!"
The making of Parallel Park has been documented by author Aliza Edelman in a 140-page monograph titled "Marylyn Dintenfass Parallel Park." Published by Hard Court Press in 2011, the book is available on Amazon.com.
In this book, Edelman chronicles art's love affair with the automobile from the time of its inception, pointing, among other examples, to Robert Rauschenberg's grounded tire prints, John Chamberlain's gestural, demolished automotive sculptures, James Rosenquist's billboard parodies, and Andy Warhol's voyeuristic silkscreens of car crashes. "Marylyn Dintenfass initiates her own critical exchange with the automobile in her large-scale installation Parallel Park," Edelman writes. "This exchange is framed around the artist's veneration of the car as an object whose idealistic metaphors evoke freedom, identity and individual personality."
In her exposition on the public artwork, Edelman "introduces the means by which Dintenfass employs an abstract language - both geometric and subjective - to explore her subject" and describes the process by which the artist converted eight 35-square-inch oil-on-paper monotypes into the 23 gargantuan 33' tall by 23' wide art panels needed in order to cover all four facades of a structure 250 feet long, 140 feet wide and five stories high. Packed with color slides of both the project and Dintenfass' luminous paintings, segments written art consultant Barbara Anderson Hill, Bob Rauschenberg Gallery Director Ron Bishop and art lecturer Michele Cohen, and a discussion of the project's significance by Wave Hill (Bronx) Senior Curator and Director Jennifer McGregor and Driscoll Babcock Gallery (New York) owner John Driscoll, Edelman's monograph not only supplies the definitive word on this important public art installation, it provides much-needed insight into the conceptualization, installation and interpretation of public art worldwide.
Aliza Edelman, Ph.D, is an independent scholar and art historian based in New York City. She writes extensively on gender and social identity in modern and contemporary art, and is committed to projects that are informed by global subjects in gender and social identities. In addition to her research on the Modern Woman and Abstract Expressionism, her scholarship focuses on artistic relationships and exchange among North and South American women artists, including her recent contribution on women artists in the Americas to the exhibition catalogue for Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-1950s, a 2010 exhibition at the Newark Museum in New Jersey.
Edelman has worked in the curatorial departments at The Jewish Museum, New York, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and has lectured in Contemporary Art at Rutgers University, NJ. Edelman received her doctorate in art history from Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey. Her dissertation, “The Modern Woman and Abstract Expressionism: Ethel Schwabacher, Elaine de Kooning, and Grace Hartigan in the 1950s,” examined a range of gender attributions for the mid-century Modern Woman.
In this book, Edelman chronicles art's love affair with the automobile from the time of its inception, pointing, among other examples, to Robert Rauschenberg's grounded tire prints, John Chamberlain's gestural, demolished automotive sculptures, James Rosenquist's billboard parodies, and Andy Warhol's voyeuristic silkscreens of car crashes. "Marylyn Dintenfass initiates her own critical exchange with the automobile in her large-scale installation Parallel Park," Edelman writes. "This exchange is framed around the artist's veneration of the car as an object whose idealistic metaphors evoke freedom, identity and individual personality."
In her exposition on the public artwork, Edelman "introduces the means by which Dintenfass employs an abstract language - both geometric and subjective - to explore her subject" and describes the process by which the artist converted eight 35-square-inch oil-on-paper monotypes into the 23 gargantuan 33' tall by 23' wide art panels needed in order to cover all four facades of a structure 250 feet long, 140 feet wide and five stories high. Packed with color slides of both the project and Dintenfass' luminous paintings, segments written art consultant Barbara Anderson Hill, Bob Rauschenberg Gallery Director Ron Bishop and art lecturer Michele Cohen, and a discussion of the project's significance by Wave Hill (Bronx) Senior Curator and Director Jennifer McGregor and Driscoll Babcock Gallery (New York) owner John Driscoll, Edelman's monograph not only supplies the definitive word on this important public art installation, it provides much-needed insight into the conceptualization, installation and interpretation of public art worldwide.
Aliza Edelman, Ph.D, is an independent scholar and art historian based in New York City. She writes extensively on gender and social identity in modern and contemporary art, and is committed to projects that are informed by global subjects in gender and social identities. In addition to her research on the Modern Woman and Abstract Expressionism, her scholarship focuses on artistic relationships and exchange among North and South American women artists, including her recent contribution on women artists in the Americas to the exhibition catalogue for Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-1950s, a 2010 exhibition at the Newark Museum in New Jersey.
Edelman has worked in the curatorial departments at The Jewish Museum, New York, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and has lectured in Contemporary Art at Rutgers University, NJ. Edelman received her doctorate in art history from Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey. Her dissertation, “The Modern Woman and Abstract Expressionism: Ethel Schwabacher, Elaine de Kooning, and Grace Hartigan in the 1950s,” examined a range of gender attributions for the mid-century Modern Woman.
www.lee-county.com/
Lee County is one of 67 counties in the State of Florida. The county seat resides in Fort Myers, which is also home to a number of outdoor public artworks.
Lee County created an Art in Public Places program by ordinance (83-21) adopted July 6, 1983 and amended (88-5) on February 9, 1988. The program's goals included the placement of art in public places owned or operated by Lee County, including buildings, parks and open spaces in order to create a climate receptive to the arts and culturally enrich and benefit the county's citizens in their daily lives. The ordinance includes a funding formula of "not more than one and one-half percent (1.5%)" of the cost of funds allocated for the acquisition, construction and renovation of public places, but the ordinance's operation was permissive ("appropriations for the acquisition, construction or renovation of a public place may include an amount ....") rather than obligatory.
Although there is no public record of the ordinance's repeal, County staff advises that the ordinance was sunset in or around 2000 and no members have been appointed to the Art in Public Places Board (APPB) contemplated by the ordinance since that time. Staff is unclear about which department or county official now has responsibility for inspecting, maintaining and insuring the works in the County's collection, which also includes a portable works component and works that have been added in order to comply with city-imposed building codes and similar requirements.
ArtistLee County is one of 67 counties in the State of Florida. The county seat resides in Fort Myers, which is also home to a number of outdoor public artworks.
Lee County created an Art in Public Places program by ordinance (83-21) adopted July 6, 1983 and amended (88-5) on February 9, 1988. The program's goals included the placement of art in public places owned or operated by Lee County, including buildings, parks and open spaces in order to create a climate receptive to the arts and culturally enrich and benefit the county's citizens in their daily lives. The ordinance includes a funding formula of "not more than one and one-half percent (1.5%)" of the cost of funds allocated for the acquisition, construction and renovation of public places, but the ordinance's operation was permissive ("appropriations for the acquisition, construction or renovation of a public place may include an amount ....") rather than obligatory.
Although there is no public record of the ordinance's repeal, County staff advises that the ordinance was sunset in or around 2000 and no members have been appointed to the Art in Public Places Board (APPB) contemplated by the ordinance since that time. Staff is unclear about which department or county official now has responsibility for inspecting, maintaining and insuring the works in the County's collection, which also includes a portable works component and works that have been added in order to comply with city-imposed building codes and similar requirements.
Marylyn DintenfassArchitect
Kevin WilliamsOwner
Lee County, FloridaProject Manager
Barbara Anderson HillHistorian
Aliza EdelmanFabricator
Jerry Banks
Artist
Marylyn DintenfassArchitect
Kevin WilliamsFabricator
Jerry Banks
Marylyn DintenfassArchitect
Kevin WilliamsFabricator
Jerry Banks
Materials
Panels made of open-weave kevlar and fiberglass fabric; aluminum tubing superstructure; 30,000 connections attach tubing to precast concrete walls.Dates
- Dedication, 2010
Awards
- Public Art Network 2011
There are no podcasts available.
Description
In most places, parking garages blight rather than enhance urban environments, but Marylyn Dintenfass' Parallel Park has transformed the 5-story Lee County Justice Center Parking Garage into a work of fine art that has first time visitors asking “Is this the fine art museum?”
The site-specific 30,000-square-foot outdoor art installation consists of 23 open-weave Kevlar and fiberglass fabric panels that have been attached to the exterior of the parking garage by aluminum tubes. Each panel...
The site-specific 30,000-square-foot outdoor art installation consists of 23 open-weave Kevlar and fiberglass fabric panels that have been attached to the exterior of the parking garage by aluminum tubes. Each panel...
Tom Hall, Art Southwest Floria
In most places, parking garages blight rather than enhance urban environments, but Marylyn Dintenfass' Parallel Park has transformed the 5-story Lee County Justice Center Parking Garage into a work of fine art that has first time visitors asking “Is this the fine art museum?”
The site-specific 30,000-square-foot outdoor art installation consists of 23 open-weave Kevlar and fiberglass fabric panels that have been attached to the exterior of the parking garage by aluminum tubes. Each panel is 33 feet tall by 22 feet wide and the images change as the sun carves its daily arc and clouds scurry across the bright blue Florida sky.
Taken together, the 23 panels “metaphorically express the spirit of the automobile.” It’s a subject with which Dintenfass has had a love affair since before the time she could drive. “The circle shapes conjure tires, headlights, dashboard instrumentation and steering wheels,” Marylyn explains. “Linear patterns are emblematic of roads, ramps, directions and parking designations.” The gestural brushwork and vibrant colors reflect the freedom and speed she associates with 1960s-era muscle cars.
It’s an apt simile given that Fort Myers’ was the winter home of Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, two of the leading pioneers of the American automobile industry.
Each panel evolved from a 35-inch square oil-on-paper monotype which was photographed, drum-scanned and enlarged to ten times its original size using specialized digitizing software. The resulting images were then printed on the fabric panels using archival ink and coated with a protective ultraviolet screening to ensure long-life durability. The fabric allows air flow while screening parked cars from view.
The installation resulted from an interlocal agreement between the City of Fort Myers and Lee County, Florida that was designed to comply with Fort Myers' public art ordinance, which encouraged developers to place public art on new buildings constructed within the city limits.
The site-specific 30,000-square-foot outdoor art installation consists of 23 open-weave Kevlar and fiberglass fabric panels that have been attached to the exterior of the parking garage by aluminum tubes. Each panel is 33 feet tall by 22 feet wide and the images change as the sun carves its daily arc and clouds scurry across the bright blue Florida sky.
Taken together, the 23 panels “metaphorically express the spirit of the automobile.” It’s a subject with which Dintenfass has had a love affair since before the time she could drive. “The circle shapes conjure tires, headlights, dashboard instrumentation and steering wheels,” Marylyn explains. “Linear patterns are emblematic of roads, ramps, directions and parking designations.” The gestural brushwork and vibrant colors reflect the freedom and speed she associates with 1960s-era muscle cars.
It’s an apt simile given that Fort Myers’ was the winter home of Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, two of the leading pioneers of the American automobile industry.
Each panel evolved from a 35-inch square oil-on-paper monotype which was photographed, drum-scanned and enlarged to ten times its original size using specialized digitizing software. The resulting images were then printed on the fabric panels using archival ink and coated with a protective ultraviolet screening to ensure long-life durability. The fabric allows air flow while screening parked cars from view.
The installation resulted from an interlocal agreement between the City of Fort Myers and Lee County, Florida that was designed to comply with Fort Myers' public art ordinance, which encouraged developers to place public art on new buildings constructed within the city limits.
Tom Hall, Art Southwest Floria
map not available at this time.
Location
Lee County Justice Center Parking Garage
2116 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Fort Myers, FL 33901
United States
2116 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Fort Myers, FL 33901
United States
Located on the 5-story Lee County Justice Center Parking Garage across Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. from the Lee County Justice Center.
Nearby Items
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| Sun Gate | 0.2 miles | | ||
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| Robert E. Lee Memorial | 0.4 miles | |
