Slopes neighbors to dedicate new sculpture
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The South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association will celebrate its 10th birthday at 7 p.m. tomorrow at St. Paul of the Cross Monastery, where it will dedicate a new sculpture.
Designed by architect Peter Kreuthmeier, a resident and member of the association's board, the sculpture is installed at the monastery garden at Brosville Street and Monastery Avenue.
The work replicates the neighborhood's topography in CORE-TEN steel scrim. At 48 feet long, it curves gently around a concrete retaining wall and represents contours of the land at varying heights -- 4 feet tall at its shortest, said project manager Colin Butt of Technique Architectural Products, the firm that fabricated and installed the sculpture.
A concrete wall serves as the backdrop. Between the wall and the steel scrim is a reduced-energy lighting system.
"The holes are buildings and stairs, and the light plays through them almost like a jack-o'-lantern," said Mr. Kreuthmeier. A steel-bar pattern in relief over the perforations acts as a "layer of topography" that reflects sunlight and shadow by day, he said.
"I'm thrilled with the way it turned out," he said. "You can put all the details on paper and calculate how the lighting will behave but you never know" until it's in place. "You can predict what it will look like, but you can't script the kind of emotional response it might evoke.
"It's really a map of the neighborhood," he said.
Duquesne Light donated the small plot that Slopes residents cleared of overgrowth and turned into the monastery garden last year. The sculpture was installed in August and is "one of a continuing installment of street furniture ideas we have for the Slopes," said Mr. Kreuthmeier.
First Published September 24, 2008 12:00 am
