Madison Arts Commission Announces 2013 Art in Public Places Award

Victor Castro Creates Sculpture for new Meadowridge Library

The Madison Art Commission's Art in Public Places Program is pleased to announce a $10,000 award to the Madison Public Library Foundation (MPLF) to support the creation of a site specific sculpture by Victor Castro for the Meadowridge Library. Castro will work with members of the community to create a permanent sculpture that will be hung in the walkway in front of the new library entrance at 5740 Raymond Road. Castro, who has completed many public art projects, particularly in Mexico and Peru, will be creating the Meadowridge piece out of Tetra Pak (the silver-lined material used for cartons for broth, soup, shelf stable milk, etc). The artist's "social sculptures" are created by gathering the materials from the community and engaging residents in the process of creating the final piece. The Meadowridge Neighborhood Association strongly supported the choice of Castro for this project writing, "he is a Madison artist of international caliber admired for his artistic vision and accomplishments and for the way in which he successfully engages community in the making of art." The artist will host workshops in the space to get the community involved in the design and the preparation of materials (For example, on November 9 from 9:00am to 1:00pm in the Bubbler room at the Central Library, Victor Castro of US Gathering - Participatory Sculpture Project). Castro himself wrote the following in his artist statement, "For the last ten years, the focus of my work has been community-generated social sculpture projects, many of them large-scale. Community engagement and teamwork are crucial to each of my projects, as the people I collaborate with gather, process, and transform materials, building a sculpture piece by piece, while also making decisions about the final result. Each member of the community chooses her/his own level involvement in my projects. Having lived and worked in Madison, WI since July of 2012, I have been continually impressed by the strong sense of community I've encountered here, and I believe that Madison is an ideal venue for the community-based projects. . . Contact and exchange between community members will be a core element of this creative process, and each participant will discover new forms of communication and interaction."

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