Marvin Gaye Park
6201 Banks Place NE Washington, DC
July 12 – September 30, 2012
Opening Reception and Artist Talk
this Saturday, July 14th at 3pm

Washington Project for the Arts presents Awning Studies: Marvin Gaye Park by DC-based artist Patrick McDonough in Marvin Gaye Park (formerly Watts Branch) in Northeast DC from July 12 – September 30, 2012. Awning Studies: Marvin Gaye Park is adjacent to the Marvin Gaye Park Recreation Center and less than half a mile from the Capitol Heights Metro Station. The work is located outside and can be viewed during daylight hours. A reception and artist talk will take place at the Marvin Gaye Park Recreation Center on Saturday, July 14 at 3pm in conjunction with the DeanwoodxDesign Art & Cultural Temporium launch.

The latest work in McDonough’s Awning Studies series, the project was developed during WPA’s 2011 Public Art Residency (PAR) Program at Socrates Sculpture Park (SSP, the Park) in Long Island City, NY. As the 2011 Public Art Residency Artist, McDonough participated in a two-month residency at SSP from July 1 through September 2, 2011. The resulting project, titled Awning Studies: Socrates, was exhibited in the Park from September 10, 2011 through March 4, 2012.

Awning Studies: Marvin Gaye Park adapts the project to its new environment and continues McDonough’s exploration of the awning form as the key domestic vernacular architectural adornment of the northeastern United States. The project takes the form of a series of fabricated awnings without buildings installed on existing infrastructure, on the ground, and rising on columns of steel supports. With Awning Studies: Marvin Gaye Park, the artist continues to emphasize the relationship between his awning structures and the architecture of the surrounding neighborhood, an emphasis that was also present in the two earlier iterations of the series, Awning Studies: Florida Ave NE and Awning Studies: Socrates. Located in the historic Deanwood neighborhood, Marvin Gaye Park is surrounded by residential architecture with features that mirror the structure of McDonough’s project. The work’s proximity to a recreation center and newly renovated playground provides an ideal context for McDonough’s ongoing exploration of leisure space and free time and connections between these notions and issues of art making, art viewing, use value, and class.

This project has been made possible with the support of the Bernstein Family Foundation and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ DC Creates! Public Art Program.

Commissioners | Judith Terra, Chair | Lavinia Wohlfarth, Vice Chair | Marvin Bowser | Susan Clampitt | Carl C. Cole | Christopher Cowan | Edmund C. Fleet | Rhona Wolfe Friedman | Alma H. Gates | Philippa Hughes | Rogelio A. Maxwell | MaryAnn Miller | Danielle M. St. Germain-Gordon | Gretchen B. Wharton