"A Beautiful Thing": Willie Cole on His 30 Years in Public Art

(September 14, 2021)

SUMMIT, NJ—Willie Cole still remembers his first encounter with public art. “I used to sit on the Lincoln statue in front of the Newark courthouse when I was a kid,” he recalls. “It was a regular stop for me because when I walked from the museum, that was halfway home.” That statue, known as Seated Lincoln, sculpted by Mt. Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum in 1911, was just one of many public sculptures Cole got to know as child growing up in Newark. “The public art was like a playground for little kids,” he says. “I always wish my mother had a photo of [me with Lincoln] but nobody took a picture back then.”

The Lincoln statue still occupies the same bench in front of the old Essex County courthouse but these days when Cole visits the nearby Newark Museum, which he visited often as a boy, he’s just as likely to encounter one of his own works of art. One such work, a large contemplative bronze titled The Sole Sitter, now greets visitors just beyond the museum’s entrance in roughly the same spot where Cole recalls being awed by a large African sculpture when he was a child. “I would come in the museum in that front door,” he says. “And there was a big African statue there called the 'Nimba,' and now my piece is almost in that location, so that’s almost cosmic to me.”

Today Cole’s art can be found not only in Newark but in the permanent collections of dozens of museums around the country, from the Met to MOMA to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.—and, just as often, in towns like Summit, New Jersey, where one of his sculptures is currently on display on the Village Green. Titled Woman in Heels, the large figurative piece demonstrates Cole’s fondness for taking ordinary objects (in this case, the iconic female “power shoe”) and transforming them into something new. The work was brought to the city by Summit Public Art, a city-based nonprofit that has brought more than 100 works of art to public spaces throughout Summit since 2002. Modeled entirely from previously-worn high heels, the kneeling, full-bodied figure immediately attracts notice from passersby and commuters on their way to the nearby train station.

“People will see these things and they’ll walk right by them and only see a pile of shoes,” says Cole. “But then when they turn around and come back, they see something else, they see whatever is, a face or a sitting person, and it’s always a huge reaction. So doing that with large-scale public art is good. It’s a good thing for your health too because it makes your heart beat a little faster in that one moment. You get a rush just from that one experience.”

Cole’s latest collaboration with Summit Public Art is his third with the organization, a relationship that began back in 2014 when he installed two pieces made out of recycled water bottles, one of his first experiments with the medium. “I had no idea that people made art out of water bottles,” he says. “And I Googled it and I didn’t find anything. But maybe my computer was wrong because six months later I saw a lot of artists making things out of water bottles. And I decided my distinction would be the things that I make, not the material."

One of those works, H2O TBX, took the shape of a car (“because the bottle was plastic and plastic was oil,” explains Cole) while the other, a large-scale piece titled Ten Thousand Reasons, resembled a tornado. The bottles used to make the sculpture were collected by local students, many of whom likely remember seeing Cole putting the finishing touches on his work during his visits to the Village Green.

“That’s special, too,” says Cole, “that Summit has really supported me with these bottles, because in those years, the bottle was a new medium for me, a new object. And when I made that giant tornado, that was an amazing experience for me.”

Cole says he’s delighted to have his work back on display here in Summit, where he will be the guest of honor for Summit Public Art’s upcoming fundraiser, “An Evening in ‘The City of Art,’” on September 25th. “As an artist,” he says, “I like the fact that people who don’t go to museums can see the work.” When people encounter public art, he explains, “it evokes feelings and memories and thoughts for them. And that’s what I think the role of public art is. It gives people a sense of release and relief. Because you walk through a day in the world that you have put into your own mind and now somebody else is knocking on your head with something you’ve never seen before,” he says. “So it forces you to take a pause. And that’s a beautiful thing.”

Willie Cole will be appearing at Summit Public Art's "An Evening in 'The City of Art'" fundraiser on September 25th. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit the following link:
https://secure.givelively.org/event/friends-of-summit-public-art-inc/the-city-of-art/the-city-of-art

Please RSVP by September 15th!

Summit Public Art is a 100% volunteer-run, donor-funded, city-based organization dedicated to bringing public art to spaces throughout Summit since 2002. To learn more, follow them on Facebook or Instagram @summitpublicart or visit their website at www.summitpublicart.com.

To see more of Willie Cole’s art, including his more than thirty years of public art installations, visit him at www.williecole.com.