Art Around

Marvin Gaye Park (formerly Watts Branch) in Northeast DC.

Awning Studies: Marvin Gaye Park is adjacent to the Marvin Gaye Park Recreation Center and less than half a mile from the Capitol Heights Metro Station. The work is located outside and can be viewed during daylight hours. A reception and artist talk will take place at the Marvin Gaye Park Recreation Center on Saturday, July 14 at 3pm. McDonough will teach a workshop for children enrolled in Marvin Gaye Park’s summer camp on July 16.

The latest work in McDonough’s Awning Studies series, the project was developed during WPA’s 2011 Public Art Residency (PAR) Program at Socrates Sculpture Park (SSP, the Park) in Long Island City, NY. As the 2011 Public Art Residency Artist, McDonough carried out a two-month residency at SSP from July 1 through September 2, 2011. The resulting project, titled Awning Studies: Socrates, was installed in the Park from September 10, 2011 through March 4, 2012.

Awning Studies: Marvin Gaye Park adapts the project to its new environment and continues McDonough’s exploration of the awning form as the key domestic vernacular architectural adornment of the northeastern United States. The project takes the form of a series of fabricated awnings without buildings installed on existing infrastructure, on the ground, and rising on columns of steel supports. With Awning Studies: Marvin Gaye Park, the artist continues to emphasize the relationship between his awning structures and the architecture of the surrounding neighborhood, an emphasis that was also present in the two earlier iterations of the series, Awning Studies: Florida Ave NE and Awning Studies: Socrates. Located in the historic Deanwood neighborhood, Marvin Gaye Park is surrounded by residential architecture with features that mirror the structure of McDonough’s project. The work’s proximity to a recreation center and newly renovated playground provides an ideal context for McDonough’s ongoing exploration of leisure space and free time and connections between these notions and issues of art making, art viewing, use value, and class.