Sculptor, In The Flesh

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas season kicked off early as Swiss artist Felice Varini’s 110-foot tall, multidimensional painting ​“Square with four circles” was formally ​“unveiled” at a public ceremony.

The completion ceremony for the orange-red “floating image (read about it more here) took place Friday evening, a week before the formal start of the annual A&I festival, ushering in the summer public-space arts season.

Laura Clark is the head of Site Projects, the group that spearheaded the creation of the piece. In addressing the audience, she singled out the National Endowment for the Arts and The Study at Yale in appreciation for their support.

Later, she told the Independent that Site Projects had raised $175,000 for ​“Square with four circles,” explaining, ​“That was to cover the artists’ fee, a year of project, and the cost to remove the piece if it has to be removed. We went into this hoping that people in the community would connect to it strongly enough that there would be a consensus that it should stay.”

Associate Vice President of Yale University for New Haven and State Affairs Mike Morand thanked Varini for further contributing to New Haven’s already abundant supply of free art. ​“Just do a calculation of how much money is saved by all the incredible free art in this city,” he encouraged his mostly seated audience.

To drive his point home that free art is at the core of New Haven’s vitality, Morand presented the artist with a monograph copy of Wallace Steven’s poem ​“An Ordinary Evening New Haven.”

“Tonight, thanks to Mr. Varini, Wallace Stevens has come off the page,” he said.

Alderwoman Frances ​“Bitsie” Clark and Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. also made appearances at Friday’s event.

“This is a very erudite ribbon cutting — usually my ribbon cuttings involve places that serve fried chicken,” said the mayor, who went on to praise the marriage of new art and older architecture. The majority of Varini’s image has been painted onto the backside of the Crown Street parking lot Carleton Granbery designed in the 1970s.

Born in Switzerland and a resident of Paris, the artist used a translator to address to the crowd. This is his first public work in the United States, though the gallery Demish Danant represents him from Chelsea, N.Y.

Another, separate piece by the artist is also running in the New Haven Public Library on Elm Street, entitled ​“Four circles in the air.” Photographs of the artists’ work elsewhere in the world are on exhibition in the Yale University Art Gallery.

At an after-party in the garden patio of nearby restaurant Kitchen Zinc, Varini mingled with patrons and public officials. Asked how the art would be taken down, if it must eventually be removed, he replied, through the help of a translator, ​“It’s a silly question. The artist makes the art; it is up to someone else to figure out how to unmake it.”

Varini (whose name is pronounced Fell-EE-chee Var-EE-nee) began painting ​“Square with four circles” on May 23, 2010.