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Nine new sculptures unveiled in Newport Beach Civic Center Park

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Newport Beach welcomed nine new sculptures to Civic Center Park on Saturday afternoon. A 10th sculpture will be installed in the park in January.

Several artists discussed the ideas behind their pieces with residents and members of the local arts community. Some of the sculptors participated in a walking tour of the park led by the city’s arts foundation.

The Civic Center Park exhibition opened in September 2014 with 10 original sculptures scattered throughout the park. Those artworks will be removed in 2016. The 10 new sculptures will remain in the park until summer 2017.

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The new pieces are:

• “Re-cycled,” by Jarod Charzewski and Sean Mueller, is composed of repurposed bike chain rings. The work is placed where the pathways converge at the primary entrance to the dog park in the upper Civic Center Park.

• “Prime Commonality,” by Luke Crawley and Quincy Owens, represents the ancestral commonality between humans and chimpanzees. The three 7-foot-tall pillars represent human and chimpanzee chromosomal banding, using panels of aluminum and translucent acrylic. The pillars are at the stairway entrance at the top of the park on Avocado Avenue.

• “Decline,” by Grant Irish, is part of a larger series made with discarded fragments of machinery from Kauai’s North Shore. The 15-foot-long steel piece is at the top of the lower park’s entry stairs.

• “Three Saplings,” by Diana Merkessinis, is made of reclaimed steel. It is located along the sloped hillside adjacent to the parking area at the park entrance.

• “Double White,” by Bertil Petersson, weighs 400 pounds and is 6 feet tall. It is in the upper park and can be viewed from the nearby outdoor seating area.

• “Demoiselle,” by LT Mustardseed, is a representation of the damselfly, a species native to California. It was created using recycled materials like automotive parts.

• “Act/Equator Z360,” by Kenneth Capps, is a zinc-on-steel work that the artist describes as “a split atom that fell from the sky; incessantly in motion,” according to a city news release. The piece is located midway up the lower area of the park.

• “Pebble Series,” by Edwin Hamilton, is part of a series of work “that aspires to tap into a universal human psychic content evoked by ancient stonework in a contemporary sculpture,” according to the release. It is near the center view area in the middle of the lower park.

• “La Cage aux Folles,” by architect Warren Techentin, explores the craft of pipe bending, computational procedure and fields of linear strands. The sculpture is along the entry drive to the Civic Center parking area.

• “Sunflower,” by Patricia Vader, is a wind-driven kinetic metal sculpture that supports eight windmills representing the petals and heart of a sunflower. It will be installed in January.

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