Sam Moyer Doors for Doris

Stone forms the foundation and framework of New York City. It is the bedrock that supports the structures we inhabit and it clads many of them too. To mark the threshold between Central Park’s boulder-filled terrain and Midtown Manhattan’s built environment, Sam Moyer (b. 1983, Chicago, IL) has created a massive three-part sculpture, with a title that pays homage to Public Art Fund founder, Doris C. Freedman (1928–1981).

Moyer’s hybrid sculpture unites imported stone with rock indigenous to the New York region. The artist inlaid marble fragments into three double-sided vertical concrete slabs and framed them with contrasting rough-hewn bluestone monoliths. Their final arrangement demonstrates her impressive skill in composing sculptural forms, with its “doors” pivoted ajar to evoke the dynamism of the bustling city.

Doors for Doris examines how our culture values and utilizes materials. Moyer gathered its disparate collection of discarded marble remnants from various renovation projects and stone yards around the city. These polished stones bear the markings and shapes of their original uses. They also display the unique colors, patterns, and geological history of their sources—quarries in Brazil, China, India, Italy, and beyond. Each stone in Moyer’s mosaic compositions takes on an even more striking hue against the others and the locally quarried rock, an apt metaphor that encourages us to consider the diverse character of our city and our interconnected lives within it.

Sam Moyer: Doors for Doris is curated by Public Art Fund Curator Daniel S. Palmer.

Sam Moyer (b. 1983, Chicago, IL; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) received her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and her MFA from Yale. Moyer’s work was included in the 2010 Public Art Fund exhibition Total Recall at MetroTech Center in Brooklyn and has been exhibited at The FLAG Art Foundation, New York City (2018); The Drawing Center, New York City (2014); The Bass Museum, Miami, FL (2014); University of Albany Art Museum, NY (2012); Flag Projects (2012); Société, Berlin (2012); MoMA PS1, New York City (2010); The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO (2009); Cleopatra’s Greenpoint, Brooklyn (2008). Moyer’s work is included in prominent collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; and The Aïshti Foundation, Jal El Dib, Lebanon.