Steel and Fire Sculpture at SteelStacks To Be Lit

Tonight’s Musikfest Preview Night will give the public the opportunity to orient themselves to the new concert sites on Bethlehem’s South Side, clustered around the 4-story ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks.

At 9:00 p.m., visitors will also be able to witness the inaugural lighting of the permanent steel and fire sculpture called “The Bridge.” Installed in the Air Products Town Square, the sculpture is intended to be an iconic placemarker for the site, symbolizing revitalization of the nation’s largest privately owned brownfield.

The 68-foot-long sculpture is a simple, graceful arc of steel that swoops overhead in the space between the ArtsQuest Center and the former Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces. Powered by a natural gas burner, blue flames will burn on the arc at regularly scheduled times each night of Musikfest, for five minutes at a time. ArtsQuest President Jeff Parks and Bethlehem Mayor John B. Callahan will push the button to light the flames for its public debut.

The blue flame, which will be visible from above and below the arc, is a reminder of the prosperity and industry on the site when Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces burned around the clock, illuminating the South Side sky with blue flames. Those blast furnaces produced steel that built the nation.

Sculptor Elena Colombo designed “The Bridge.” She was awarded the commission by ArtsQuest in September 2010, after a national search. The selection of Colombo’s design was made by a six-person panel of respected arts administrators and Mayor Callahan.

Colombo, a native of Scranton, PA, now lives and works in New York City. She is a classically trained sculptor and architectural designer, owner of Colombo Construction Corp., and professes to have a genetic fascination with fire. Her business specializes in site-specific large scale works, which she designs from bronze, steel, stone, and concrete, incorporating elements of fire, earth, water and air.

Her work is found private residences, public spaces and luxury hotels and resorts. Colombo’s distinctive Firebowls have won design awards. She explained the elegant steel span of the new sculpture represents a bridge between art and industry, and between the past and future, because the campus on which it sits--a center for arts and culture--is a revitalization of an industrial site.

Particularly with the mesmerizing focal point of fire, Colombo creates works to which people are drawn. Up close, visitors will be able to see that the large arc is subtly embellished with dozens of small rectangular steel panels. As a tribute to the place and its historic significance, each panel is engraved with the name of a major building or bridge constructed with Bethlehem Steel. Among them are the Chrysler Building in New York City and the San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

The SteelStacks sculpture project was partially funded by a $200,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, through their Mayors’ Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative. The NEA awarded 21 such grants last July to recipients in towns across the U.S. The organization chose to make the announcement in Bethlehem on the SteelStacks site.

During the 10-day run of Musikfest (Aug. 5-14), “The Bridge” will be lit at 9, 10 and 11 p.m. Sunday–Thursday, and 9, 10, 11 p.m. and midnight Friday-Saturday.

Musikfest Preview Night: 6:00-11:00 p.m. Thursday, August 4, SteelStacks, 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem, PA. Inaugural lighting of “The Bridge” sculpture at 9:00 p.m. Additional lightings at 10 and 11 p.m. Free. www.musikfest.org