The City of West Hollywood announces a new permanent addition to the City’s public art program, the sculpture Parallel Perpendicular by artist Phillip K. Smith III, sited in the Robertson Gardens area of West Hollywood Park, located adjacent to N. Robertson Boulevard between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose Avenue.
The City of West Hollywood has reopened a large portion of the park-site at West Hollywood Park, which was previously closed for completion of the West Hollywood Park Phase II Master Plan Implementation Project. Amenities in this newly opened section of the park include a new picnic area adjacent to an expanded turf area for passive recreation activities.
Parallel Perpendicular by artist Phillip K. Smith III is comprised of five freestanding mirrored volumes composed of parallel and perpendicular planes hover above a 40-foot diameter circle of green landscaping. Parallel Perpendicular is meant to be an entirely interactive piece. By day, these forms reflect the park visitors and environment as well as the surrounding West Hollywood views. By night, the mirrored surfaces become pure fields of color that slowly move through the color spectrum. These colors reflect off each other, merging upon colors, creating new spaces of color, projection, and reflection.
The scale of Parallel Perpendicular is in direct response to the more intimate atmosphere of the Robertson Gardens section of West Hollywood Park. This beautifully situated area serves as a park entry and connector to the Robertson and Santa Monica Boulevard retail and neighborhood zones. Parallel Perpendicular is the focus of this section of West Hollywood Park to draw people in both during the day and in the evening.
The artwork is built from a stainless-steel internal framework that is wrapped with a custom glass lay-up of two-way mirror and clear mirror lay-up with an internal safety lamination. The five mirrored volumes have dimensions that range from 4 feet long x 8 feet high x 1.5 feet deep to the largest volume that measures 9.5 feet long x 9.5 feet high x 5.5 feet deep.
LED lighting at the interior of the framework provides an even glow across the various surfaces while simple hardware components control the color choreography and power supply for the lighting. All five of the volumes hover on a 12-inch diameter brushed stainless steel tube (internally bolted directly to the framework) that provides both structural support and connectivity for wiring.
Phillip K. Smith III received his Bachelor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. From his Palm Desert, CA-based studio, he continues to push the boundaries and confront the ideas of modernist design. Drawing inspiration from the cold rigidity of the Bauhaus movement, the reductive geometries of minimalism, and the optic sensation of California’s Light and Space movement, Smith III attempts to resolve the complex challenge of finding a natural state of life and spirit within these ideological aesthetic constrictions. The results are deceptively simple and compelling objects that seem to breathe and move as you observe and interact with them.
Featured in hundreds of online and print publications, Phillip K. Smith III is known for creating large scaled temporary installation such as Lucid Stead in Joshua Tree, Reflection Field and Portals at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, ¼ Mile Arc in Laguna Beach, and The Circle of Land and Sky at the inaugural 2017 Desert X exhibition. His public artworks can be viewed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Kansas City, Nashville, Oklahoma City and beyond. The artist’s work is also included in the forthcoming exhibition and catalog Unsettled organized by the Nevada Museum of Art and artist Ed Ruscha.
Parallel Perpendicular is an Urban Art project organized by the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division. The Urban Art Program, established in 1987, provides a mechanism to integrate free and accessible art into the urban fabric of the City. Most new developments in the city require a developer to contribute 1% of the project value to an on-site artwork or payment of an in-lieu fee to the West Hollywood Public Art and Beautification Fund. For more information about City of West Hollywood arts programming, please visit www.weho.org/arts.
The City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division delivers a broad array of arts programs including Art on the Outside (temporary public art), Arts Grants, City Poet Laureate, Free Theatre in the Parks, Human Rights Speaker Series, Library Exhibits, One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival, Summer Sounds + Winter Sounds, Urban Art (permanent public art), and WeHo Reads.
For more information about Parallel Perpendicular, please contact the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Manager, Rebecca Ehemann at (323) 848-6846 or at rehemann@weho.org. For people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, please call TTY (323) 848-6496.
You cannot put a price on art yet it does cost money. How much of the $220,000,000.00 for this four acre project went to this piece. Will there be a final audit/budget released to the public? Will it be out before the November election? Will there be a crack/leak in the skyhigh swimming pools in the near future?
If WeHo had a real news outlet, they would be using the Freedom of Information Act and other investigative avenues to inform the public as to the inner workings of City Hall. Unfortunately, we don’t have that. If you want to know about bars and shops and what the head of the chamber of commerce thinks or what City Hall wants you to think, you can get that from Wehoville. But, at any rate, yes, since we pay the taxes and reside here, we should know the total bill on this park folly (and every other pet vanity project), how… Read more »
If I were a city resident I would ask the state auditor to do a full 37 year forensic audit, similar to the one that brought down the insider government that was the City of Bell. Alas our fence is the city limit and we are outsiders.But a legal resident could make that request.
As my mom would say, some of you would complain if you were hung with an new rope.
One commenter on here asked that drunk Abbey guests not wreck this new artwork.
I think what will happen instead is that Abbey guests will walk around stumbling trying to figure out the artwork. They will give up and just fall into the planter to be discovered the following day by city workers.
“Parallel Perpendicular” is a abstract art piece,so you have to look at it for some time to surmise what the artist is trying to say.Some effort is involved,so any drunk Abbey guest won’t make it.
I like the marshmallows at the west entry on SMB. Wish we could keep them.
Are you talking about twinks or what?
The homeless will smash this in one week. Nice waste of our money.
I still remember when you thought homeless people hangout at the Weho pool 😂 😂 It’s obvious you don’t live here.
Oh Green-mouth..aka…John Erickson, I thought you were back in Oshkosh Wisconsin. Are you going to be wearing new nail polish at the council meeting? What about your hair? Are you going to die it purple?
More unhinged nonsense from you.
Stick to writing bad musicals about Snoopy.
And, yet, another positive comment from you! Thanks a lot.
You’re welcome Francis.
Looks like something made in a sixth grade art class.
Please please drunken abbey guests don’t smash this!
Kinda disappointed with the layout of the park. Kind of underwhelming for the millions it cost. Maybe the aquatic center will be a stunner(?),
I do enjoy the space, but I too am underwhelmed with the layout and application. Plus nothing has changed at either dog park and so many of the plantings are already dead.
Yeah, they plant all of the stuff and then don’t take care of it and it already looks lack luster.
A replay of the contrived “art exhibit” relics appearing on the SMB medians and unwanted shards of the demolished LACMA building destined for the Norwich Gathering Place. Someone is clearly benefiting from these commissions enabled by the Arts Commission and does not appear to be the public.
agree
This perfect for West Hollywood, more mirrors for everyone to admire themselves in! Quick note, I don’t know if you should say that the Bauhaus was a movement, it was an experimental school with many different ideas and approaches towards the arts and architecture throughout its existence. Kind of like Art Deco isn’t a style, but an era.
You sort of got it backwards. Art Deco is absolutely a style. Also a piece of art or architecture can be from the Art Deco era (1920’s-30’s) and not be Art Deco making the era idea more of a misnomer because ultimately it’s about characteristics..
Bauhaus is like the movement I had after I really big dinner.
Absolutely love the piece. How much did this art cost the city?