Christo: The Gates, Central Park

[yyy]

Thanks for the photos Edward I like the ducks

[Comelade]

Hello of France.

Know you to them work of Christo on the kennel of Snoopy... Great

http://www.charlesmschulzmuseum.org/Christo/

[Edward]

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/42303.htm
CHRISTO CHANGO! 'GATES' ALL GONE

"The Gates" slammed shut in Central Park yesterday as the last of the fiery orange-colored frames, near 60th Street and Fifth Avenue, came down at 11:10 a.m., 33 days after the first one went up on Feb. 7.

Rob Vinci, 36, an area leader who worked on setting up and taking them down, called the moment "bittersweet," as the public art project lining the park's walkways receded into memory.

An estimated 4 million visitors poured into the park to see the 7,500 fabric-draped frames, created by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, before the park yesterday returned to its naturally drab wintertime self.

Dan Kadison

[BigMac]

Newsday
March 14, 2005

Gates recycled; buyers must sign contracts

BY MARY VOBORIL
STAFF CORRESPONDENT

Slide Show: 'The Gates' recycled

Nazareth, Pa -- Christo and Jeanne-Claude and even Mayor Michael Bloomberg called it "saffron," but Barry Friedman prefers a less arty, more utilitarian term to describe the vivid color of "The Gates."

"I call it Home Depot orange," says Friedman, sales manager for Nicos Polymers & Grinding Inc. "Everybody can relate to that. Even some of the people I talk to in China can relate to Home Depot orange."

Nicos Polymers, which relocated to eastern Pennsylvania from West Babylon in 1987, has just started to granulate the 750,000 pounds of extrusion-grade, hollow-core vinyl from "The Gates," the massive art installation that threaded a serpentine skein of orange through Central Park from Feb. 12 through Feb. 27.

Delivery trucks back up to the 180,000-square-foot plant, revealing orange poles stacked floor to ceiling in snug, honeycomb-like symmetry. The other day, the driver of a saffron-colored forklift was off-loading 120 poles at a time while another worker, Hilberto Mendez, handled the grinding.

Mendez plucked a 16-foot pole from a neat stack and slid it into the maw-like chute of a Cumberland grinder, which distantly resembled an industrial-sized Cuisinart. The grinder swallowed the pole whole, as if it was a 16-foot carrot stick, and with a grating crash chewed it into lightweight orange "gravel," which it spit into a 3-foot cardboard cube.

Once full, the plastic-lined cube was set aside for eventual sale as PVC regrind.

Some materials used in Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Running Fence" in 1977 were given to California ranchers for reuse. Why not "The Gates?"

Jeanne-Claude has said that it was intended to be as transitory as a rainbow, a work of ephemeral beauty that slips into pleasurable memory. There's a more prosaic reason, though: "If it was going to be used outside for a fence, additives would need to be put in to protect the color retention and the integrity of the vinyl," says Bob Perrone, who works in sales support for Nicos.

Because the project had a life of only 16 days, the artists didn't include the stabilizing additives, Perrone said.

Nicos took on the contract about three weeks before installation of "The Gates" began, Perrone said, a deal with another firm having collapsed for unspecified reasons. A spokesman for Christo and Jeanne-Claude said Nicos was one of several companies considered.

Security had been a prime concern for the artists, who wanted no "relics" of the deconstructed project to remain.

"We assured 'The Gates' project that it's not going to be turned into 'Son of Gates,' like 'Son of Kong,' " Perrone said. Toward that end, no component is stored outdoors.

"Right now we're just gathering up offers of people who wish to purchase it," Perrone said of the 3/8-inch regrind of 315,491 linear feet, or 60 miles, of pipe.

"We're also qualifying them. It's quite possible that some e-Bayers are going to call here and say, 'Can I buy 50 pounds?' I'll know they aren't a user. They're looking for a souvenir."

For security, the firm also assured the artists that the materials "wouldn't be sitting around for eight months," Perrone said.

The pulverized Gates are not being marketed as such, though the trade publication "Plastics News" has reported the Nicos involvement. And it's not hard, Perrone said, to deduce the provenance of 750,000 pounds of single-source, single-use vinyl regrind, especially in Home Depot orange.

Buyers must sign an agreement that they not use "The Gates" as a selling tool when they re-extrude the granules into such things as sewer pipe, flowerpots or storm surge barriers.

In actuality, "they won't care," Perrone predicts. "They need material to make product."

Nicos also bought the 7,500 rip-stop nylon "curtains," which are to be shredded, baled and sold to a recycler. Same with 15,000 high-impact orange polystyrene "boots" that covered the nuts and bolts at the base of each vinyl pole, and another 15,000 polypropylene safety cones.

Nicos has 16 Cumberland grinders. "If everything is ideal," says operations manager Dan Sheehan, "the job could be done in 20 days," working two shifts.

Everything has not gone ideally, though, with winter weather causing delays in trucking the materials about 90 miles from a Queens warehouse to eastern Pennsylvania. The other day, there was work for only one grinder. Large areas of the plant, built in 2001, were empty, awaiting the deconstructed orange project.

The novelty of handling the remnants of haute, high-concept art quickly faded.

"It comes in and it just goes into the machine," said Sheehan, watching orange granules flow into the cardboard cube. "Right now, it's just a job."

Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc.

[BigMac]

New York Post
October 3, 2005

REINCAR'GATE'D

By LUKAS I. ALPERT

"The Gates" have become "The Fences."

Seven months after the towering orange frames that lined the walkways of Central Park came down, they've been reborn as white fence posts framing yards across the United States and Canada.

The project's path from high-concept art in the Big Apple to unrecognizable fencing in Anytown, U.S.A., began on Feb. 27, when artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude began taking down the 7,500 gates that had filled the park with orange — and an estimated 4 million visitors.

From the start, the husband-and-wife team promised to recycle every bit of the $20 million project — from the vinyl frames and nylon drapes to the aluminum bracing and steel pedestals.

First off, the disassembled artwork was shipped to a Queens warehouse.

Then the vinyl and nylon were shipped to Nicos Polymers & Grinding Inc. in Nazareth, Pa.

While the fabric was shredded and respun, making it untraceable, the framing, which was the bulk of the project, was ground down into 500,000 pounds of hard-to-hide bright orange vinyl chips.

"Usually, we're dealing with some old pipes from a gutted house, not something from a famous art project," said Bob Perrone, Nicos' project manager.

"I was nervous at first because of all the notoriety, but it really went very well."

The metal parts ended up with Hugo Neu, whose Jersey City scrap yard handles all of New York's recyclable metal. There it was melted down and sold all over the world.

Nicos soon found a buyer for those blindingly orange chips in Plastival Inc., a major manufacturer of vinyl railing, fencing and synthetic lumber.

What was left of "The Gates" was remade at the company's Chicago factory into fencing.

The company mixed the orange with white vinyl. What they ended up with were fence posts that are white on the outside, but with a bright orange core.

"Anyone who bought this would have no idea, unless they looked inside the posts," said Plastival CEO Guy David.

Plastival sells its product, at roughly $100 a 6-by-6-foot panel, primarily through construction-supply chains including Lowe's in the Southeast, Menards in the Midwest, and Home Depot in Canada.

They don't do business in the New York area, so don't expect "The Gates" to have a return engagement here any time soon.

Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[BrooklynRider]

November 19, 2009

Artist Jeanne-Claude Dies; Co-Created 'The Gates'

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:03 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Artist Jeanne-Claude, who created the 2005 installation in Central Park called ''The Gates'' with her husband Christo, has died. She was 74.

Jeanne-Claude died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm, her family said in an e-mail statement.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he spoke with Christo on Thursday morning and offered condolences on behalf of all New Yorkers.

''The Gates'' festooned 23 miles of Central Park's footpaths with thousands of saffron drapes hung from specially designed frames.

More than 5 million people saw ''The Gates,'' and it was credited with injecting about $254 million into the local economy.

The family statement said Christo was deeply saddened by his wife's death but was ''committed to honor the promise they made to each other many years ago: that the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude would continue.'' That included completing their current installation, ''Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado'' and ''The Mastaba'' a project in the United Arab Emirates.

[scumonkey]

Such a shame. She was a very talented and extremely nice person. I was lucky enough to meet her and her husband
while in college at RISD back in the early eighties.
They came to lecture about their art, and generate interest in the gates project. They stayed long afterward,
meeting with and talking to anyone that wanted to get to know them a little better. I'm Sure Christo is devastated.
They struck me as a couple that were extremely in love with one another.