ARTIST: CHARLES O. PERRY
Title: Untitled, 1977
Medium: Steel
Location: Scott Rakow Youth Center, 2700 Sheridan Avenue
Charles O. Perry is a creator of large scale and monumental sculptures that celebrate and question the laws of nature. Believing that sculpture must stand on its own merit without need of explanation, Perry’s works have an elegance of form that masks the mathematical and scientific complexity of its genesis. After graduating from Yale, Perry practiced architecture with the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. At that time, he won the Prix de Rome, a prestigious award granted by the American Academy in Rome for two years of study in Italy. “The basic difference in the discipline of architecture and sculpture is that I cannot fore a solution in sculpture, where in architecture, one can arrive at an apparent ‘rational’ solution through continual work.” For Perry, the appropriateness of the form is the final goal or criteria.
Since 1994, Perry concentrated on large-scale public sculpture, the most prestigious of which stands in front of the Natural Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C. Perry’s sculptures are also located in public spaces at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Harvard University, Boston, MA; the University of Connecticut at Storrs, CT; Zeimu University Tokyo Japan; Indianan University Museum of Art, Bloomington, IND; General Electric headquarters, Fairfield, CT; IBM Headquarters, Charlotte, NC; Shell Oil, Melbourne, Australia and Singapore. There are about ninety major commissions throughout the world.
