Morristown park gets 800 pounds of art

It’s called Convergent, and the sculptor still was hammering away after Tuesday’s unveiling.

“It’s a big undertaking,” Nathan S. Pierce said of his 800-pound swirl of stainless steel and cast acrylic.

He wasn’t just referring to transporting the behemoth via pickup truck from his studio in Cape Girardeau, MO, to the as-yet-unchristened park in the shadow of the Modera apartments at 51 Prospect St. in Morristown.

The project has been a three-year journey — four years, if you count the international competition announced by the nonprofit Morris Arts in 2018.

Pierce beat out 167 artists for the commission, according to Kadie Dempsey, a former Morris Arts employee who was a catalyst for Morristown’s “One Percent for Art” program.

Video: ‘Convergent’ unveiled in Morristown:

That municipal program requires redevelopers to contribute one percent of their project cost, up to $100,000, for public art. Convergent was underwritten by Mill Creek Residential, Modera’s developer. Mill Creek also was a major backer of the Gateway Totem Project, erected at the nearby Early Street Community Garden in 2016.

Pierce, son of a third-generation stonemason, had to overcome a global pandemic, an economic downturn and a shortage of materials to deliver his sculpture to its pedestal.

“I didn’t doubt it would eventually happen,” insisted Morris Arts Executive Director Tom Werder.

It was such a long time coming that Dempsey refused to let anything–not even a freshly broken ankle–keep her from Tuesday’s ceremony. She fractured the ankle hours earlier, in a spill at home.

Mayor Tim Dougherty described Convergent as a “talking piece” and symbol of “our living culture.”  Werder credited Dougherty with pushing for a global art search.

“The mayor decided when planning this process to go as wide as we could, to get the very best art we could attract to Morristown,” Werder said.

Entries were screened by three panelists: Don Ehman, former director of public art for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts; public arts consultant Sheila McCoy, former director of public art for NJ Transit; and Cleveland Johnson, then-director of the Morris Museum.

The idea behind the sculpture, said Pierce, 46, “is to bring a visual form to the relationship that these new developments have with the neighborhood. The circular forms and the acrylic panels kind of create a metaphor for these new and interesting perspectives that are coming together to create a new and interesting way to think about things.”

Pierce studied sculpting at Southeast Missouri State University. His work has been displayed at the Chicago Sculpture Exhibit, and in permanent collections of the city of Bentonville, Ark.; the Paradise Palms and Sculpture Gardens of West Delray Beach, FL; and the city of Decatur, GA.

Every spring, in a ritual akin to musical sculptures, he relocates up to 30 of his leased works around the country.

“My partner, she calls it the Great American Springtime Sculpture Shuffle,” Pierce said with a laugh.

Tuesday’s audience included Council President Stefan Armington, Councilwoman Toshiba Foster, town Administrator Jillian Barrick, Shade Tree Commission Chairperson Kristen Ace, town Planner Phil Abramson, Grow It Green Morristown Executive Director Lisa Alexander, and Morris Arts staff members.

Morris Arts anticipates a larger community celebration this summer as the organization marks its 50th anniversary.

The next “One Percent” project will be a reflective ceiling piece in the public stairwell linking Bank and Market streets, at the triangular Fox Rothschild law building, Werder said.

That submission is from William Feuerman of Office Feuerman, a design and research agency founded in New York in 2007 and based in Sydney, Australia, Werder said.

Eventually, he added, public art also will be installed at M Station, the office redevelopment at Spring and Morris streets. But a traffic roundabout comes first. That intersection will be closed to through-traffic this weekend for construction.