I decided to start the new year with a post about public artwork, because you can never go wrong with art. And during this ride I found myself in front of the Pepco Building at 9th and G Streets (MAP) in northwest D.C.’s Penn Quarter neighborhood, where stands a sculpture entitled Epoch. The steel polychrome sculpture with a colorful painted finish was commissioned by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art in Public Spaces Program in 2004, and was formed and fabricated by Albert Paley.
Paley has been one of America’s foremost modernist metal sculptors for decades. Based in Rochester, New York, the artist has site-specific works across the United States, more in Europe and Asia, and generally executes three major pieces a year. While he has done private commissions, it’s his public pieces that have defined his career. His breakthrough commission was designing the iron portal gates for the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in D.C. in the 1970s. Also here in D.C., in the early 1980s he designed a series of tree grates and benches for the Pennsylvania Avenue Redevelopment Corporation. Some of his other notable works include the portal gates for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, a series of sculptures on Park Avenue in New York City, and an exterior sculpture entitled Sentinel located at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, New York.
Epoch is also a multi-disciplinary piece of art. In addition to its aesthetic component contributed by Paley, the 24-foot tall sculpture is stamped with a poem written by Delores Kendrick. Kendrick was an American poet who was born and raised in D.C. After graduating from Georgetown University, she first taught in the D.C. public school system, where for two decades she taught at Phillips Exeter Academy. In 1999 she was appointed the second Poet Laureate of D.C., succeeding Sterling Brown. Kendrick later worked for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, developing programs for high school and college students, and for established and emerging poets. Sadly, she passed away in 2017.
The poem inscribed on Epoch reads:
“ We are
flesh and blood
steel and skin
struggling within
a linear light
toward one heartbeat
that forges
a sacred space,
an entrance
to our fragile
dreams that rise
upon a muscle
of memory
and wind. ”
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