Art at City Hall

If you’ve driven past the new City Hall building on Excalibur Road, you might wonder about the large circular concrete pad in the front driveway area. The 16-foot pad will be the location of the Bowie Portal Sundial, a piece of public art commissioned by the City of Bowie.

Sundials have been around since ancient Egypt and measure time by the position of the sun. Most people are familiar with small garden sundials that cast a shadow on a flat surface marked with the hours of the day. As the sun’s position changes, the time change is indicated by a shadow on the sundial.

The Bowie Portal Sundial is a monumental, window-style, vertical sundial. The sundial is made of bronze and frosted glass. It stands over 15 feet high atop two stainless steel pillars which create a doorway, hence the word “Portal” in its name, because a portal is a doorway or gateway that’s large. The space between the steel columns is approximately three feet wide which is enough for someone to walk through. At the base of the steel pillars there will be benches decorated with images of children playing and racehorses. The height will allow the dial to catch sunlight above the long winter shadows of the City Hall building, while the glass will allow the dial to be read from both sides. The ground beneath the sundial will be a 16-foot compass rose created by hundreds of pieces of colored tile.

The sundial will be installed in early April and will take approximately seven to ten working days to put together. The Bowie Portal Sundial is the work of artists Gino and Judith Schiavone of Taos, New Mexico.

The other piece of artwork designed specifically for the building is a mobile that hangs in the main lobby of the building.

The “Triple Crown” kinetic sculpture is the work of Philadelphia artists Kate Kaman and Joel Erland. Kaman and Erland named the large sculpture as a tribute to Bowie’s racehorse history and its Triple Crown winners, Gallant Fox and his son Omaha. The sculpture consists of three golden flowers representing black-eyed Susans, not only the Maryland state flower, but the flower used to adorn the winning horse at the Preakness.

Each golden flower contains 13 golden petals of bronze mesh outlined by copper tubing. Each petal is unique, weighs between 15 and 20 pounds and is roughly 1.5 feet wide by 4 feet long. The three flowers are attached together with three steel hoops each 4 feet in diameter. The sculpture is 12 feet wide and hangs approximately 12 feet in length. It weighs less than 1,000 pounds. The petals radiate outwards as the giant black-eyed Susans rotate in slow motion using only the subtle air currents in the lobby.

The sculpture hangs along the main axis of the building in the rear section of the lobby.

Effective 4/19/2011 our new address is:

Bowie City Hall
15901 Excalibur Road
Bowie, MD 20716