Roberto Chao develops community murals through collaborative design and painting. Boston’s account of Afro-Latin Music and Dance describes work with Hyde Square Task Force, local youth and residents at Mozart Park in Jamaica Plain. Installed in 2022, the mural uses painted PVC panels and imagery connecting Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas through music, dance and cultural history. At Roxbury Community College, Chao led An Ode to Africa in the Americas, unveiled in November 2023. More than two dozen Black and Brown artists contributed to that project, painting aluminum-composite panels along an outdoor campus walkway. These projects document a community-led approach to civic and educational settings. The individual profile credits Chao’s leadership while retaining collective authorship; current studio location and commission availability remain unverified.
Project details & references
Practice
mural, community public art
Project references
Afro-Latin Music and Dance · An Ode to Africa in the Americas
Ryan Elmendorf combines electronics, programming, mechanical engineering and metalworking in interactive public art. He works with Nick Geurts as the Denver-based Elmendorf/Geurts team, translating shared concepts into installations that respond to visitors through motion, light and sound. Their Awakening combines an articulating head-and-hands sculpture with a camera obscura; the studio records its first Black Rock City presentation in 2016. Light Pond in Aurora uses sensors and illuminated pavers to create wave-like responses to sound. Denver’s public-art collection also credits both artists for Sky Song at Levitt Pavilion and the compass-like True West at Green Valley Ranch Town Center Park. This profile distinguishes Elmendorf’s technical and artistic contribution while retaining Geurts’ shared credit; project histories are not statements of sale, loan or commissioning availability.
Project details & references
Practice
interactive public art, electromechanical sculpture, light and sound installation, kinetic installation
Project references
Awakening (with Nick Geurts) · Light Pond (with Nick Geurts) · Sky Song (with Nick Geurts)
Ryan Mathern develops large steel sculptures through Prayer Engine, combining new and reclaimed materials with open frameworks and cut-metal imagery. His artist statement describes contrasts between reflective metals and weathering surfaces, often incorporating Tibetan script and mythical creatures. Fire is a material and performance element in these works, illuminating their internal forms and connecting them to participants. Sangbu is a thirty-foot dragon-shaped steel and stainless-steel fire cauldron created for Burning Man in 2009; its documented later presentations include Atlanta-area locations and other festivals. Dragon Fossil, created for Burning Man in 2018, uses concrete, steel and stainless steel in another dragon form. Citipati’s project description presents two nine-foot skeletons beneath a taller fire arch; its multiple Honoraria years are retained as funding/project references rather than one precise completion date.
Sam Cooler is a Bay Area engineer and maker of interactive installations that connect physical movement with light, sound and programmed effects. The Dancing Forest links swiveling steel poles with elastic cords so participants influence one another through a shared moving structure. Light Curve, created in 2024, places controlled flame effects on a participant-driven pendulum. Cooler’s portfolio also documents Fantasmophone, an interactive sound sculpture with LEDs and surrounding speakers, and electronics work with the Flaming Lotus Girls. Burning Man’s 2018 and 2024 archive entries credit Art for Open Spaces alongside Cooler for Dancing Forest and Light Curve. These projects document an interdisciplinary practice in structures, electronics and software; their event listings and portfolio descriptions do not establish current installation condition or commercial availability.
Sanford Biggers combines sculptural traditions and cultural references in public projects extending across monuments, flags and architectural displays.
Project details & references
Practice
sculpture, installation, public art
Materials in documented works
aluminum and stainless steel (MIT prints 'Aluminum stainless steel'), resin, mixed media, cast bronze
Project references
Oracle, Seigaiha and Just Us · Oracle · Madrigal
Documented contexts
Rockefeller Center campus; Rockefeller Center public plaza
Sayaka Ganz assembles reclaimed objects into sculptures that emphasize animal movement. Her public-art archive includes permanent commissions in Indiana as well as a separately documented traveling exhibition practice.
Scott Froschauer is a Los Angeles artist whose experiential practice draws on engineering, design, computing and fabrication. He explores communication through objects that initially resemble familiar elements of everyday life. The Word on the Street adopts the materials and visual conventions of road signs, replacing prohibitions and warnings with encouraging messages. The series asks passers-by to notice an unexpected difference in an apparently ordinary setting. His portfolio documents twenty signs distributed through Glendale parks and libraries, and three pieces in the Renwick Gallery’s 2018 No Spectators exhibition. It separately identifies The 10 Principles at Reno Playa Art Park. These are presentation references within a broader series; the undated city entries do not establish present display status, ownership or permission to place functional traffic signs.
Project details & references
Practice
public art, sculpture, experiential installation, graphic communication
Project references
The Word on the Street — Glendale presentation · The Word on the Street — Renwick Gallery presentation · The 10 Principles — Reno Playa Art Park reference
Sebastian Errazuriz works across art, technology and design. His documented projects include public moving-image interventions, a satellite-image LED installation and a kinetic environment for an Art Basel collectors' lounge.
Project details & references
Practice
public art, installation, design, digital art
Materials in documented works
black-and-white moving image, LED screen, custom software, satellite imagery
Project references
A Pause in the City That Never Sleeps · blu Marble · Foundations
Documented contexts
Times Square moving-image presentation, January 2015; Ludlow Street launch and New Museum neighborhood display, 2019
Representative artist / studio imageImage: groundsforsculpture.org ↗Photo courtesy of The Seward Johnson Atelier, Inc. (as credited at source)individual
Seward Johnson (1930–2020) was an American sculptor whose practice encompassed life-size figures, enlarged cultural images and sculptural environments inspired by painting. His atelier documents the Monumental Scale series and his founding of the Johnson Atelier in 1974 and Grounds For Sculpture in 1992. This historical profile focuses on contemporary sculpture and the experience of encountering it in a public landscape. The Grounds For Sculpture record for The Awakening identifies a cast-aluminum collection version dated 2014, numbered 4/8. Its records also distinguish the 2012 aluminum-and-wood God Bless America from the 2003 styrofoam A Turn of the Century. Those object-specific dates, materials and editions must not be applied to every version of the works. The profile does not imply current services by the deceased artist or availability through Big Art Partners.
Project details & references
Practice
monumental figurative sculpture, public sculpture, sculptural environments
Project references
The Awakening · God Bless America · A Turn of the Century
Explore sculptures that physically move: visitor-activated mechanisms, changing forms and wind-driven installations. Compare documented projects, understand how motion shapes the encounter, and identify the site and maintenance questions to resolve with an artist.
Find installations that make listening, musical participation or sound-responsive light part of a place. Compare playable works and spatial compositions, then plan how the experience will share space with visitors, neighbors and everyday activity.
