Ralph Helmick

While in elementary school he partook in the Carnegie Museum’s renowned Tam O’Shanter art classes for children, whose alumni include Andy Warhol, Annie Dillard, Philip Pearlstein and Jonathan Borofsky.

[2] Helmick has created over 50 complex, layered sculpture commissions, working in various materials (metal, stained glass, cast resin, found objects) to realize large-scale public artworks in courthouses, parks, airports, schools, hospitals, museums, and other civic spaces across the US.

The pewter heads, which are silver except for the golden ones making up the dome, were created by scanning the likeness of students, staff and faculty members.

[6][7][8] The Founder’s Memorial Park, Abu Dhabi, UAE The Constellation is a monumental public artwork that forms the centerpiece of The Founder’s Memorial Park in Abu Dhabi, a permanent national tribute to the UAE’s founding father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan [1918-2004], a transformative leader who championed peace, tolerance, women’s rights and the environment.

This “double portrait” illustrates biological fact (the multitude of newborns from which a single individual may survive to adulthood) while simultaneously evoking an intergenerational spiritual connection.

While from a distance one’s first impression is of a vast linear abstraction, graphic clues soon give way to recognition of overlapping local plant and animal forms.

At once serious and sly, sophisticated and innocent, Field Guide aims to promote contemplation on several levels, offering a challenge in which viewers can find aesthetic engagement, intellectual stimulation, and a renewed connection to Nature.

These historical panels are interspersed with abstract perforated "mist" layers, and framed above by a "sun" sequence, and below by a succession of terrazzo floor graphics.

It is inspired by the paintings of Grant Wood, and by compositional strategies employed in Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e, literally "floating world").