Bird-like sculpture hits Guagnzhou

Now is composed of six pieces of painted aluminum. [Photo / China Daily]

Shapiro wasn't fazed when asked to create a "site-specific" work for Guangzhou, China - a place he'd never seen.

Shapiro studied what the city looked like, and consulted frequently with the building's architect, Craig Hartman of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, to integrate the work within the overall design.

"I saw models of the building at the SOM offices in San Francisco, so I felt quite comfortable with what I was doing."

That was true even when the consulate building expanded literally on the drawing board, become two stories instead of one.

Six years after the process began, Shapiro and the six pieces of his sculpture were ready to head for China, and he says he was thrilled with the result and it's high visibility on the riverbank.

"What did surprise me was the amount of light there was at night," he says, and the pale but very intense blue paint color shows up very well in the evening landscape.

"Guangzhou is a growing and changing city and it is a great honor to be asked to make a sculpture in such a vibrant context," the native New Yorker says.

That context includes Zaha Hadid's internationally acclaimed Guangzhou Opera House, which sits on the Pearl River across the street from the new consulate site. The juxtaposition prompted a last-minute adjustment in the installation plans, Shapiro says.

"In my original concept, my sculpture was situated so that it pointed at the opera house. It was an acknowledgment, pointing it out," he says. "But in Chinese culture pointing at something can be considered impolite, so we turned the piece to face another direction."

Because the consulate building won't be ready to open until later this year, there was no public event during Now's installation, which disappointed Shapiro. But he got other opportunities to interact with locals, especially art students, giving talks, one at the The Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and another at Times Museum.

"Clearly sculpture plays a role in Chinese culture."