A New York artist who was born and raised in Mount Vernon now has a piece hanging at the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center.
Christine Rebhuhn’s piece “Higher Octaves” was hung at the wellness center early last week, drawing to close a roughly three year process.
“This is something that will last a lifetime in this building,” said Matt Siders, director of Mount Vernon Parks and Recreation.
“This is so Mount Vernon,” said mayor Tom Wieseler, talking about dedicating the piece in the lobby of the wellness center and so many in the community coming to celebrate Rebhuhn’s piece at the reception. “We now have a New York artist’s piece in the entryway of a community space, a New York artist whose most recent gallery exhibit sold out.”
Wieseler noted this was a big deal in Mount Vernon and that it was a multiyear project between the artist and the council, hampered initially by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rebhuhn said she had presented the final plans for the piece to the Mount Vernon city council in November 2022, and has been back working in studios locally since April.
She thanked Matt Bostwick and Matt Bowman for saving the 1897 Steinway piano for her to use as a portion of the piece that was turned into part of the sculpture. She also thanked River City Metal Works for the use of studio space as well as their work in helping to mount the project.
“I’m so happy to see this art project finally hung up in my hometown,” Rebhuhn said.
Rebhuhn also had a question and answer period about the piece held Tuesday, June 20 (after press deadline) about the piece and her career at the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center.
On a note describing the piece, Rebhuhn wrote “some of the most beautiful things can remain hidden from our view, because their expansiveness is too large to be knowable, or because they live inside the space of the mind. Higher Octaves is a sculpture that searches for what we cannot say. The work utilizes the voices of a late 19th century Steinway grand piano frame and a model of a humpback whale tail, both incomplete bodies that have found resonance in their shared abyss. Let this piece be an accompaniment to life’s confusion, the losses and estrangements, unexpected gifts and the profound hilarity of everything.”
The new art piece, as seen from the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center’s second floor.