Public fountains are sputtering to life across the city, splashing away memories of the way-too-long winter. This includes Triumph of the Human Spirit, a Percent commission completed in Foley Square in 2000. Designed by sculptor Dr. Lorenzo Pace to commemorate the African burial ground discovered during the construction of a federal building nearby, this gleaming black granite monument soars over Manhattan’s Civic Center.

Adam Simon completed “12 x 3 x 4” at PS310 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn in the summer of 2012. Deciphering the individual objects in the 22-foot-high mural is one of the artwork’s primary attractions. The colorful images are drawn from the lives of elementary school children; a bicycle, a scooter, a laptop, a jump rope, and other items a student is likely to encounter overlap to form a vibrant milieu.

More images of the piece can be viewed on the artist’s website. 

Artist Michael Waugh received a Percent commission for IS611, a public school being built around the corner from the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo. Waugh employs a technique derived from ancient Hebrew calligraphy called micrography where sentences are hand written in dense tangles that form images when viewed from a distance. His series the more i see of men utilizes text from a number of government documents (for example the first image above consists of text from the 1981 final report issued by the Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties) to render drawings inspired by 18th century etchings of dogs. 

Sarah Sze completed her Percent for Art piece Momentum and its Conservation at the Mott Haven School in the Bronx in 2010. The suspended sculpture and its shadow are located in the atrium of a complex of four separate schools.

This year, Sze we will be representing the U.S. at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Learn more about the artist and her intricate works on her website.

Through the end of March, the Center for Book Arts is presenting Tomie Arai: Tales from Home, an exhibition of silkscreen monoprints and books made from wood and found objects by this native New York artist.

Arai has completed two Percent for Art commissions. Her first, Discovery, was completed at the DeSoto School in Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood in 1996. The piece is a game of sorts that uses etched glass and brass images embedded in the floor to explore the themes of memory and history which Arai focuses on in her personal work.

Read more.

New York’s Armory Show is an internationally renowned fair which showcases the works of leading modern and contemporary artists, including new pieces by several Percent for Art commissioned artists. 

Black and Blue Woven by Julianne Swartz is one such piece. Stop by Josee Bienvenu Gallery’s booth to view this and other works by Julianne, who was recently commissioned to create an artwork at Hunters Point Library in Queens.

Congratulations to Bronx-born artist Fred Wilson, who was honored at this year’s Mayor’s Awards for Arts and Culture for his outstanding contributions to New York City’s cultural life.

Wilson’s Percent for Art piece, Pangaea, located at Townsend Harris High School in Queens, was completed in 1995. Rather than relying on cartography to determine the shapes of the land masses, the artist used his beliefs on each continent’s global significance to guide the creation of his map. This piece, akin to the artist’s other projects, makes the viewer question knowledge that he or she takes for granted as truth.

In 1963 John F. Kennedy formalized the Art in Embassies program, acknowledging the role of art as—to quote Hillary Clinton in this month’s issue of Vanity Fair—“a universal language in our search for common ground.”

So it’s fitting that one of the first recipients of the U.S. Department of State’s biennial Medal of Arts is Carrie Mae Weems, whose 1999 Percent commission—Mind, Health, Spirit, and Body—resides in a Bronx high school. Students in New York City public schools come from homes where over 171 languages are spoken and art is essential to helping them find ways to communicate beyond words alone.

Part of former mayor Ed Koch’s lasting legacy in the City he loved and led are the 300 (and counting) works of permanent public art commissioned since he signed the Percent for Art program into law in 1982. He gave due credit for the initiative to advocates such as his Deputy Mayor Ronay Menschel and Doris Freedman. But he had his own grasp of what was so important about integrating art into the City’s recovery from the brink of bankruptcy. When interviewed for City Art in 2005, Koch said “art is an integral part of the environment. It inspires us; it reflects something deep within us that needs to be expressed.”

Above, Mayor Koch signs the Percent for Art Law on October 28, 1982, surrounded by supporters.

School is a place for reflection, transformation and community. Jane Benson’s newly installed piece for IS/HS 585 “Mirror Globe (Mapping the New World)” illustrates these themes with the use of 30,000 1” mirrored pieces—creating a flickering landscape of a community constantly in motion. 

Yesterday the New York City Fire Department swore in 318 new probationary fire fighters. Many of the fire stations where they’ll soon hang their helmets include Percent commissions, such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Honor 2000 at Engine 75 in the Bronx and Julian LaVerdiere’s Sentinel Lanterns at Engine 277 in Brooklyn.

In December the New York Times Travel section published the first ever 36 Hours itinerary for the borough of Queens. We were thrilled that the author called out Flushing Meadows-Corona Park’s Percent commission by artist Matt Mullican: the story of the two World’s Fairs that happened in the park etched into granite near the iconic Unisphere. Completed in 1995, the work consists of 464 individual blocks that make up a 3,000 square foot tableau, forming a set of modern day hieroglyphs that herald the dawn of the Space Age in the same medium favored by the pharaohs.

MTA Arts for Transit recently wrote about an installation in the Prince St. station by Janet Zweig and Edward Del Rosario. Zweig was commissioned by Percent for Art for a piece at a Bronx high school, completed in 1997. One could almost imagine the tiny figures from Carrying On depositing their own slips of paper into the bronze boxes at Walton High.

Jeffrey Gibson’s work will be at the Marc Straus Gallery on the Lower East Side through December 23, 2012. Gibson recently completed a Percent for Art commission at PS 264 in Brooklyn - Nephelococcygia, or Cloud Cuckoo Land, a mural installation located in the double-height atrium of the school library (after the jump). 

Percent for Art artist Vito Acconci was recently named Designer of the Year by Design Miami. Acconci has been commissioned for two Percent projects since 1995. Above is his courtyard design for PS3 in the Bronx. As Acconci said, “the walls that enclose the children inside become the ground that children walk over and play on, outside.”