The hot July sun beats down on the bronze tigers, coyotes and other animal sculptures that have taken residence along Century City’s Avenue of the Stars.
Since November, the site has displayed Los Angeles-based sculptor and UCLA alumna Gwynn Murrill’s work as part of a yearlong, privately funded exhibition put on by the Century City Chamber of Commerce.
Over the past two decades, Murrill sculpted the 22 animal figures that now inhabit the 1-mile center median of the avenue. The animals are frozen in brief moments of action – a large, metallic feline hissing here, a deer glancing furtively back over the fountain there.
But for Trast Howard, director of the Gwynn Murrill Studio, as the sun sets and night casts its shadows across the city, the figures are roused to an all-too-real state of awakening. Passerby might even be convinced that the cool breeze returned them from their sluggish stupor.
“One of the best times of day to view the exhibition is in the twilight hours where the pieces seem to almost move or change their position as you drive by,” Howard said. “They become shadows of these animals that are coming out of the landscape. They take over Century City in the evening … (and) seem to gain energy as the light disappears.”
Murrill’s sculptures, which include an eagle at the northern entrance to the avenue, cougars encircling the fountain, a bighorn sheep, a horse and more, walk a delicate line between realism and abstraction. Inspired by nature and manifested in bronze anatomy unmistakable from afar, the figures are highly minimalistic depictions of animals reduced to their most essential forms.
“I (have seen) a lot of animal sculptures that have been done, but they weren’t really doing justice to the animal,” Murrill said. “Most people try and make it really realistic (but) it feels like a picture of an animal. I was trying to abstract animal enough to have it sit in contemporary artwork but still … make it feel like an animal without giving it what I consider silly details.”
Murrill began sculpting during her time at UCLA when she was pursuing her master of fine arts in painting. She initially favored more functional pieces such as her first sculpture, a rocking horse. But as she picked up bronze casting, Murrill said she took an interest in the bodily form and eventually found that her best work was of animals.
Carl Schlosberg, curator of the exhibition and chair of the Century City Chamber of Commerce Arts Council’s Sculpture Committee, said he was interested in presenting art, architecture and landscape as unified elements.
The high-rise architecture in conjunction with the newly landscaped medians created an environment he said naturally lended itself to Murrill’s work. Schlosberg became familiar with Murrill when curating an exhibition of hers in Malibu a couple of years prior.
Alongside the Gwynn Murrill Studio, Schlosberg worked with the Century City Chamber of Commerce and the city of Los Angeles for about a year before installing Murrill’s pieces in early November.
“One of the things that was part of a greeting plan done in Century City a few years ago by an architecture and urban design firm (was) to make Century City a little more pedestrian-friendly and pedestrian-oriented,” said Susan Bursk, president and CEO of the Century City Chamber of Commerce.
Integrating public art into the city could help achieve this effect of bringing the community closer together, Bursk said. She added, Murrill’s sculptures promote discussion and dialogue and they give people a sense of where they are in nature, beyond buildings alone.
“Gwynn Murrill on Avenue of the Stars, Century City” is the first in a planned annual rotating sculpture program by the Century City Chamber of Commerce Arts Committee, Howard said. For now, it’s a chance for people to see the work of one of Los Angeles’ pre-eminent sculptors, albeit temporarily.
The sculpted animals’ elongated limbs accentuate their carnal crouches and proud, territorial struts. The sinister, smooth voids where eyes should be merely serve to convince the observer of the animals’ omniscient gaze.
“You have the (motif of) city encroaching on nature; this is sort of the opposite,” Howard said. “It’s a representation of nature coming back to where it once was prominent. I still hear stories about coyotes in the Hollywood Hills. Now you have coyotes in Century City.”