Art aims to be a beacon

Sculptor proposes an airy, abstract plaza in Raleigh

The newest and most jarring piece of downtown art will feature a wall of water dripping over a Fayetteville Street plaza.

Cars will flow past a grassy square, driving on black granite streets sunk 3 feet down.

A spotlight will beam a mile into the air, and a stainless-steel canopy will hang over the street, flashing bits of poetry.

"In the night, it's even more magic," said Jaume Plensa, the Spanish sculptor who revealed his design Monday. "This is a place for freedom."

For centuries, downtown Raleigh has preferred monuments to fallen soldiers, dead presidents and -- with one acorn-shaped exception -- the more somber pages of history.

But Plensa, working with a $2.5 million private gift, has delivered abstract art in all its playful weirdness.

His work will drop into the center of Raleigh's hopes for a downtown bustle lost decades ago. It will stand in the middle of a Fayetteville Street reopened to cars, a $10 million project, and alongside the city's new convention center, a $215 million gamble. All of this, the city hopes, will come together in 2008.

Plensa's work, though, is more likely to make a passer-by turn his head and squint.

"It's the sort of work you would see in Seattle or Portland," said Leah Wiebe-Smith, executive director of the Raleigh Arts Commission. "It creates a space rather than creating a piece. It makes you look up."

If approved by the City Council, which probably will decide in late summer, Plensa's art -- a gift from Jim Goodmon, president of Capitol Broadcasting -- will stand just in front of the site of the convention center Raleigh knocked down last week.

The commission and Plensa will have to sell the concept to a public that has shown some wariness about nontraditional art. The so-called chandeliers, another art project proposed for Fayetteville Street, have inspired some passionate thumbs down from amateur critics. The chandeliers would stand 25 feet tall alongside the street, topped with brightly colored glass.

Plensa had a chance to explain and sell his design in greater detail at a dinner with Raleigh leaders Monday night.

"From my perspective, it's two thumbs up," Mayor Charles Meeker said. "It's a classical design with contemporary relevance. The initial reaction is very positive, and I think this is something that's going to move forward very quickly."

Silicon-chip symbolism

Plensa, who traveled to Raleigh from Barcelona this week, cited many inspirations for his "City Square."

From above, he said, it will resemble a silicon chip -- a nod to the Triangle's high-tech character. He wants his installation to act like a marketplace in London or Paris centuries ago: busy, thought-provoking, the heart of a complex urban machine.

On the ground, people could wander over the grass, stop and play chess on a stone stage or -- if so inclined -- walk through a curtain of dripping water.

Around the people, cars would pass on a sunken, black granite road. The black, Plensa said, stands for fertility -- the darkness of "the deep sea where life comes from."

Above them, a thin grid of stainless steel wires would hang and flash numbers, letters, colors -- anything.

"Let's talk about light, darkness, light, heavy, peace, love," he said, asked what sort of message his grid would broadcast. "That, for me, is poetic. Just concepts."

Stroking their chins

All the details -- height of the canopy, content of the message grid -- will be worked out later.

Meanwhile, the city's arts leaders will gawk, scratch their chins and digest it all.

"This has the potential for becoming one of the great public art works in America," said Larry Wheeler, director of the N.C. Museum of Art, adding that he appreciates how the square connects Memorial Auditorium with the Capitol dome: "It's not monumental, not overpowering. At best, it's poetic."

In recent years, Plensa charmed Chicago with a pair of interactive towers that show the faces of ordinary citizens closing their eyes and pursing their lips as a jet of water spurts from their mouths.

Critics have praised his work for being abstract without being dense, as with his set of hanging bronze letters that spell out lines from Shakespeare, a recent show in New Orleans.

He drew a similar response from his first audience in Raleigh, who wondered how he could turn simple materials -- much of his installation is open air -- into a futuristic statement.

Then, toward the end of Plensa's presentation, a woman rose and asked, "How will it look on a rainy day?"

Plensa smiled and shrugged. "Beautiful," he said.

(Staff writer Craig Jarvis contributed to this report.)