A Sculpture Trail at Laurelwood Arboretum recently welcomed two new sculptures —TULIPULA by Babette Bloch and Ferrous Couture by Robert Koch. The multiyear Sculpture Trail project, which showcases 15 unique works of art placed throughout the arboretum, is sponsored by Friends of Laurelwood Arboretum. Laurelwood Arboretum, a public park located at 725 Pines Lake Drive West in Wayne, is open daily from 8 am to sunset .
TULIPULA, installed at Sculpture Trail site 5, is a 78” x 53” x17” stainless steel piece featuring tulips cut from a single sheet of metal. “Babette Bloch’s masterful use of a grinder as a paintbrush makes the flowers strikingly three-dimentional,” said Scott Broadfoot, curator of A Sculpture Trail. “When seen in soft light with the sunken hollow of the riverbed behind it, the sculpture appears as if it’s glass or lucite. In the early afternoon when the sun suffuses it with warm light, TILIPULA reflects the vibrant colors of the foliage surrounding it.”
Babette Bloch is a pioneer in the use of laser-cut and water jet-cut stainless steel to create figurative works of art. Her sculptures explore form and the interplay between object and light, reflect their environments, and expand the ways in which stainless steel is used in contemporary art. By cutting, shaping, burnishing and grinding, she develops the material’s natural properties of brightness and reflectivity while making the dense metal seem nearly weightless and ethereal. Bloch’s molded floral and wildlife sculptures are on view in museum and private collections in the United States and Europe
Ferrous Couture, Robert Koch’s 86” x 21” x 21” steel sculpture, can be seen at Sculpture Trail site 2. The artist says that it was inspired by organic movements found in nature. He has taken a material that is rigid, hard and lifeless and transformed it into a form that is soft and fluid.
Robert Koch studied art education at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. Over the course of nearly 20 years, he created functional stoneware pottery. Ten years ago, he completed a metal sculpting class at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and knew immediately that this was his new calling. In 2004, he moved to the New York City area and began working solely on steel sculptures. His rapidly growing list of public and corporate commissions includes a major installation at the headquarters of the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation in Jersey City.
A Sculpture Trail is curated by Scott A. Broadfoot of the Broadfoot & Broadfoot gallery in Boonton, NJ. All sculptures on exhibit in A Sculpture Trail are available for purchase, with a percentage of the proceeds donated to the Friends organization to be applied towards capital improvements.
To follow the progress of A Sculpture Trail installations on Instagram go to https://www.instagram.com/laurelwoodsculpturetrl/ A GoFundMe page has been set up to accept donations for the project. To contribute, please go to https://gofund.me/058cd464