Snowbirds
The Bay Walk Park in Port Washington North is the most ambitious public project on our peninsula in a long time. The driving force behind its conception, its design, its funding, and its construction is the town’s mayor, Robert Weitzner.
In his role as curator, looking for works by local artists whose work reflected Port’s culture and history, the mayor met Jerry Shore in his studio on Valley Road.
He found and acquired a perfect fit in Snowbirds. It resonates with one of the great pleasures of living in Port Washington – the pleasure of walking along Manhasset Bay in the evening. In Autumn or Spring, you may hear the sound of migrating birds call out for attention, and look up to see them flying in formation.
As proud as the mayor was to give Snowbirds a place on the Bay Walk, he was likewise distressed a few years later in early 2014 to find that someone vandalized it, tearing one of the six birds from the sculpture. It isn’t the sort of crime that is easily solved, but what made it truly mysterious is that the sculpture was anonymously restored shortly thereafter.
Researching this column, I learned who made the repairs. My first thought was to let it be, and tell the story on one of the Historical Society’s Magical History Tours, for it would go well with another mystery near Snowbirds. Out in the bay, a citizen who prefers to remain anonymous planted an American flag on a mound of rocks to remember the victims of 9/11.
But to know the secret reveals something important about Jerry Shore, his family, and closure. His daughter Robin told me: “My brother Peter and I are the two people who repaired the vandalized piece… We saw it as an honor to repair the piece for my father who had already died at that point.”
Red Sails
Jerry told Mayor Weitzner he was inspired to make this piece when he saw some sailboats out in the bay at sunset. Their white sails had turned red.
Robin Shore said of her father: “He was not afraid to fail. He never avoided something due
to fear. He approached his sculpture this way as well. He wasn’t afraid of using color, of critics’ opinions, of trying something new, of messing up a piece he was working on – he was always open to the endless possibilities in anything he attempted. Being an artist can be a vulnerable and revealing profession, but my father did not worry about others’ opinions. He was determined to be free in his studio.
HO/80
HO/80 was a gift that Jerry gave to one of his best friends, Howard Olian on his 80th birthday. Howard and his wife JoAnne kept it outside their home until Howard ‘s death in 2007. When she sold the house and moved to Manhattan, she donated the sculpture to the Sands Point Village Club with Jerry’s permission.
HO/80 seems perfectly placed in its new location on the lawn that stretches down from the Village Club mansion to Hempstead Harbor.
As you circle around HO/80, its geometric shapes direct your attention outside yourself to the world around you; the view across the Hempstead Harbor to Sea Cliff, the sloping landscape, the mansion on the hill, and the sky above.
Ross Lumpkin is a trustee of the Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society, www.cowneck.org.
