Fox and 156th Street
Rafael Ferrer
Puerto Rican Sun, 1979
painted Cor-Ten steel, 25' high
Bronx Venture Corporation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Sate
Council on the Arts, Department of Cultural Affairs/HUD, Bronx Council
on the Arts
Puerto Rican Sun, a 25-foot high archway, was sited to provide an entrance to a community park located on an empty lot created by the removal of abandoned housing. The lot had become a place where neighbors gathered and created community gardens. It was Ferrer's first monumental commission. Like the imagery of his work at the time, it included icons of the Caribbean—arching palms surrounding the sun. From the garden looking out, the back of the solar disc suggests the moon, and is painted in the blue tones of evening.
Ferrer, who admired the work of Alexander Calder, created bold, flat cutout shapes in three large sections, which were fabricated from Cor-Ten steel at Lippincott, Inc. Bolts and struts were allowed to show. The surface of the sculpture was hand-painted with expressionistic brush strokes by Ferrer, his wife and a friend, in part to confound the neighborhood graffiti artists.
