Listen, engage, and acquire as much information from the professors at Rutgers as possible. Then go out and change the world. –Alum (MFA’87) and professor emeritus Patrick Strzelec’s advice to Rutgers’ future artists
Art & Design alum and professor emeritus Patrick Strzelec describes his soaring and looping 13-foot aluminum sculpture Past Is Prologue as a hopeful form.
Strzelec, an award-winning artist and educator who was on faculty from 2010 to 2021, says the sculpture, created to honor Rutgers University’s class of 1965, “seeks to reflect their magic, their trajectory, their innocence, the fervor to do right. The sculpture is intended to represent the bending of the circle of history.”
As he describes it, “the linear cluster is a 240-foot continuous line never intersecting but touching at strategic points, a deconstruction of the circle. The line establishes dialogues of history and individual efforts that, together, create movement and growth. It also captures the importance of gaining insight from the past, especially to avoid repeating detrimental cycles. The aerial structure that explodes into the sky encourages hope and optimism.”
Read more about Patrick Strzelec’s sculpture at Rutgers Today.
Watch our short video documenting the sculpture’s installation (accomplished with the aid of a crane!).
Image credit: Dan Engongoro/Studio E Imaging