Giant Bird Takes Over NYC

Seeing birds around New York’s City Madison Square Park isn’t a rare occurrence. What is strange is to spot a five-ton raven. Walk by the park between now and April 21st, however, and that’s precisely what you’ll see.

The sculpture, created by artist Will Ryman and made from nails—both store-bought and those fabricated from carbon steel—sits at the park’s southwest corner. In its mouth dangles a rose. Despite the assumed connections to flora and fauna a bird and a flower might conjure, the piece isn’t about nature to Ryman. It’s about transforming something cold and hard into something organic and soft.

“What I like most about this piece is the abstractions that the nails form within the sculpture,” says Ryman, a native New Yorker. “When you stand behind the sculpture and you’re looking at its back, you don’t see a bird but you see abstractions. When you step back and walk around, those abstractions become an image.”

The sculpture is truly something to behold. The gargantuan nails cascade down its back, causing the metal to somehow mimic a feather’s flow. Even the stilt-like legs change this everyday, oft-ignored creature into something you can’t help but gawk at. (Much, we imagine, like the sculpture’s journey on a flatbed truck from the private owner’s home to the park.)

Wyman recently finished a show at Manhattan’s Paul Kasmin gallery and now plans to take a break to let some new ideas germinate. In the mean time, head over to Madison Square Park to stare at this awesome, raven-like sculpture!