Although Melvin Edwards’s public sculptures’ monumental scale places them in seeming opposition to his Lynch Fragments, the two bodies of work are united by shared formal and conceptual concerns, constructing nuanced narratives around the African Diaspora, race, labor, multiculturalism, and the development of civilizations. Often utilizing graphic forms—squares, discs, half-moons, chains, and circles—these works articulate Edwards’s interest in architecture. He elaborates, “If [the sculptures] are the right scale that I prefer … a person will be able to experience them the way they experience architecture—that is, they move through and around and have a different visual experience from every point of view of the piece. But even the forms that make up the symbols will be visually interesting and change from one point of view to another and do different things in space.”
Since the 1960s, Edwards has produced over 20 works for universities, public housing projects, parks, federal buildings, and museums. The artist’s long-standing dedication to public art is, in part, an outgrowth of his early collaborations with the Smokehouse Associates (1968–70), a group established by the painter William T. Williams that included Edwards, Guy Ciarcia, and Billy Rose. Like this collective, which transformed Harlem through the creation of colorful, civically-engaged murals and environmental artworks, Edwards’s outdoor sculptures imbue abstraction with personal and collective histories, centering the shared experiences that shape communities. His first public sculpture, Homage to My Father and the Spirit (1969) at Cornell University in Ithaca, set the tone for the minimalist, geometric outdoor objects that followed.
Frequently constructed from brushed stainless steel, Edwards’s works often boast curvilinear, abstracted chain forms. Suggestive of both liberation and rupture, sculptures such as Out of the Struggles of the Past to a Brilliant Future (1982) at Mount Vernon Plaza in Columbus, OH, and Gate of Ogun (1986) at the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase, incorporate these forms into monumental sculptural archways. Dynamic and imposing, his large-scale sculptures reconfigure the public spaces they occupy.
Edwards also uses these works to forward symbols of creativity and education while celebrating the transformative power of artistic invention. Responding to the evolving landscape of higher education, David’s Dream (2023), sited at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, commemorates the center’s namesake—a significant figure within the field of African American art history. Speaking to the power of public projects to produce social change, Edwards maintains, “I think the idea of public art is very important … Just developing that attitude of building new cities, new places that are humane, that aesthetics always have to do with quality of life. … That’s the project for human beings … If we can give up war then it’s how to make life.”
