(light piano music) (rain tapping) This side up.

(rain tapping) Alright.

We have to turn around.

You still holding the center there?

Yeah, that's dead center.

Yeah, absolutely right there.

Okay.

Oh, we can see the mountain now.

Yeah.

Oh, that's really helpful.

(music) All right, you want grab that end?

You want to grab that end at all?

Pick it up, then bend it.

It gives us the idea of what the framing is gonna be like.

Not precise, but yeah.

That's a brilliant idea, Rob.

(music) This was where this project took root or first got started.

It was a model that was carved from pine, carved by hand.

And this was enlarged to the scale of one inch to the foot.

And this is the scale we've been working on to develop the concept and how we were gonna build it.

It starts as a tunnel with brick courses running vertically over the arch and faced with bricks laid in a radial pattern.

That's very typical, this kind of arch construction.

And the bricks will change gradually, from vertical orientation to a horizontal orientation at the very top where the dome is.

This is the first thing I've ever done in brick.

There's so much integrity with this way of building, it's actual masonry.

And they're methods that are basically kind of time-worn.

They're timeless in a way.

Rob and Martin are often working with more analog methods of direct sculpting of shapes.

But as an architect, I'm also generally starting with drawings and then kind of negotiating between the drawings, the 3D models and then the actual shape itself.

So the shell was brought into a 3D program, and then basically everything was built in 3D.

When you're building an arch, you have to build an arch over a form work because there's nothing to actually support the brick.

So, when you build the first brick up, it needs to lean on something.

This lath in the front is actually controlling the inside surface of the masonry, because we'll be laying brick directly on top of it.

(welding hissing) And then we put together the steel work, wrapping the steel around the guide work itself.

The rebar itself is in the center of the form.

For us to build the brick on both sides, we use the rebar as our guide to shape the masonry.

The wall will end up being a foot thick.

Rob and I are right now working on fussing all of these little details for the form work in order to be ready for the masonry, which is gonna be starting soon.

So, you can see where it comes to the top, the depth of the arch is really shallow, and at the base it's much more flared out.

So we go from a straight arch, slowly, progressively into a leaning arch.

(machinery) Once we've made the first three segments, by the third segment, it has enough of a angle, that by the beginning of the fourth segment we can begin to dispense with all the form work that was supporting these first three segments.

And this segment begins the process where these bricks are laid against previous courses and they're not gonna collapse inward to the center because their weight is being taken by the previous courses, which is a principle called Nubian vaulting.

This is the process being built in Afghanistan with earthen bricks.

And you can see how there's no interior support for this vault You can just cover an entire roof that way.

And here's another photograph.

This is the photograph I took when I was in Mali in 2009.

And it shows people building a series of vaulted ceilings on a what must be a home or house.

Martin Puryear is an artist who is cosmopolitan in every possible way.

And that begins with training in this Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, continues with his training in the Swedish Furniture Academy, and continues from there in his education at Yale University.

He met craftsmen in Sierra Leone; he thought about what they did, how they did it, and he did similar things in Sweden.

That breadth and depth of familiarity with other cultures, other situations, makes him pretty much an anomaly in the American art world, because he is not the product of a particular city or school or style.

He's somebody who takes such care with everything he does.

He often works on sculptures in wood and works through them, not generally speaking through carving, but by layering, by constructing, by merging different pieces of wood.

Martin often says he's not testing the material, and I believe that, but I do think he's really invested in and interested in what materials are able to do and what he's able to find within them.

His way of making things is really unique, I think.

There is no artist who knows as much about craft as he does.

And not just one craft, but many crafts.

All of these things are part of his repertoire, part of what makes him capable of doing the things that he imagines.

We drove these holes, aiming them all to converge at a certain point inside that would correspond to where an average person's eye level would be.

So they're all coming in at different angles through this wall.

And these holes are created by means of a tube, concrete tubes that we had made.

And they'll be set into the masonry and the masonry will be built around them.

So every single tube ideally will be facing this tennis ball.

You'll be able to see out of every single tube from this one spot.

It'll be radial from there, the view.

You'll be able to come in here and not only see right into Storm King through the arch, but you can see, it's almost a pixelated view of the trees and different artworks and the grounds around you, from this one center spot.

I think that part is really important to Martin.

He's responding so much to the landscape at Storm King.

Storm King is a place where sculpture is seen in nature and where artists design sculptures to be seen in nature.

It has every kind of sculptor and every kind of idiom of a roughly post-war contemporary variety that you can imagine.

(water murmuring) Storm King Art Center is a 500-acre outdoor and indoor museum and sculpture park.

We exhibit long-term permanent works by a number of artists.

We also have loans and temporary exhibitions on a yearly basis.

At any given time, we have about 100 sculptures out on view.

We are probably the best known outdoor museum and sculpture park in the United States.

We really can provide an opportunity both for artists to display in large scale expansive areas, and also for our visitors to really have a very free and unencumbered experience at Storm King.

My grandfather, Ted Ogden, started Storm King Art Center in 1960.

In the early 1970s, my grandfather started to ask artists to make a site-specific commission for Storm King.

And we basically say to the artist, "Take the time you need and think about what you want to do and where."

In 2010, David Collens, our director at that time, invited Martin to bring a site-specific commission for us.

And it's just been an amazing project.

It's implicit in the title that Martin gave this work, "Lookout", That the work is both about the bricks from which it is made, but also everything else around it.

It's a work that not only looks out at Storm King but looks beyond to Schunnemunk mountain, and gives people such a grand view of our landscape.

This whole piece was generated by that site.

I had an idea in mind when I was first approached, and when I saw this spot, that idea went out of the picture and I just said, "I have to come up with something that really works with this spot."

That's what this is.

(birds chirping) This is our half-scale model of the fourth and fifth segment.

And once you reach this point, there's enough angle on that bedding surface that the bricks can be laid now leaning against the previous course of brick.

So what we did last summer were these two segments at one half scale.

You can see here the two layers.

So the inner and outer layer will be built simultaneously and probably every day, or every other day, we will fill the void between the two layers with concrete.

And what will actually control the form is this interior rebar.

(hammer banging) It's falling.

I can see the gap down.

Will ya?

(hammer banging) All right?

Phew!

Coming down.

Woo!

Look at her fly.

Who's gonna jump on it?

(Martin laughing) Go jump on it.

(machinery humming) This Nubian vaulting method, what it does require is a fast setting cement, a fast setting mortar.

And we discovered a cement, which was used before the Civil War, natural cement.

It was actually mined in Rosendale, New York, and it was known as Rosendale Cement.

And it's used now in restoration of older structures, like the Washington Monument.

And Museum of Natural History in New York, Brooklyn Bridge, those are all made using the old mined cement, the Rosendale cement, natural cement.

Let me just let that set.

This entire sculpture is really about the passage, expressing the passage in working from a tunnel, from building a tunnel.

This is the vertical, this is slightly tilted, and then this is even more tilted.

And at every segment change it approaches the horizontal.

(hammer tapping) This is the location for the transition from segment three to segment four.

So what we'll be doing is we'll be laying this, the remainder of segment three, and then we'll cut along that line.

We designed the steel grid itself, so it could function like a three-dimensional drawing in space.

Instead of having to go and refer to engineering drawings and construction drawings all the time, we know exactly where the tubes are.

We just have to site the tubes.

We know exactly where the section cuts are, we just have to cut them.

That's kind of the genius of the whole thing.

Yeah, the bricks will be equidistant inside and out.

And this is our measure for that.

This simple stick.

The baton is a guide.

It's hitting on the outside and on the outside here, leaving us with the one foot-thick wall.

And the sharpie marks show that that's exactly where the brick is.

(hammer tapping) These tubes are gonna be cut nearly flush, protruding maybe a quarter of an inch.

And what you'll end up with is an elliptical hole rather than a circular hole.

Because the tubes are all, nearly all coming in at some kind of angle.

This piece at Storm King, it's waiting for you, it's anticipating you.

That makes it a very, very potent surrogate for the human figure, without actually depicting the human figure.

It makes a place for the viewer or visitor or spectator inside of an abstract form, which is profoundly humanist.

(birds chirping) So where we are right now in the shell construction is we are finishing section number six.

We really had to dial in as a team so that we have a smooth and continuous shell.

Every single brick has to be conscientiously tipped in the right direction so that we know that the surface is sweeping up continuously, and we maintain that 12-inch thickness.

But there are some areas of the shell that are a little bit wonky, as we say in the masonry that undulate a little bit.

I've never worked with curves that are this unique.

So this is one of the bricks that we use.

We have basically three different types of brick, that are all custom produced for the project.

When we're lucky, we can lay a lot of full bricks without cutting them, but I must say that this project is more cutting than probably any other vault that I've ever built.

We're about to conclude the seventh segment to close that in.

And then we'll begin the eighth, which is the last segment of angled masonry, before we reach the ninth segment, the top segment, which will essentially be the construction of a conventional dome, made like building an igloo without a form.

And you can see the openings provided in the grid, which tell us where to put the tubes.

As we approach the pinnacle, the top, these tubes are coming in at a steeper and steeper angle.

It's the antithesis of typical brick wall masonry, which is the bricks are plumb, everything is level.

Here, there's no straight line.

Nothing is horizontal and there's no plumb.

This is constantly curving in three different dimensions, three different axes.

It's constantly a sculptural process for the masons to have to stay in control of.

He was talking about this work as a tapestry, as something that's come together bit by bit as though a tapestry of brick.

Taking all of these small bricks and creating something that feels like it's at the limit of what they're able to do.

(birds chirping) And you see that there's three tubes that will be installed through those openings.

There'll be 90 openings through the wall of this structure when it's finished.

This is how the tubes were held in place, with this harness supported by this plywood block, and then it's suspended from these webbing straps that are hooked to the stainless armature.

And then they were able to secure it by filling around it with mortar in the cavity, between the inner and outer walls of brick.

There's a lot of invention as we went along, when we come to an issue, a problem.

These are the cutoffs that give an indication of the three different sizes.

This is a three-inch tube, this is a six-inch tube, and this is a nine-inch tube.

And this is what we're doing today.

We're cutting these tubes off to consistent level.

These bricks are approaching the horizontal, and as they go in closer to the center, they're gonna require more time to hold them in place as they're being laid.

And we made a jig to support them as they're setting, so the masons don't have to hold them in place manually.

(music continues) Bring it right to here and then we'lL make our mortar joint and then make it look really awesome.

You wanna do it?

You wanna do the honors?

Do you wanna film it?

No.

I'll let you guys- (Lara laughing) Here we go, Lara, you ready?

Ready.

BOTH: All right.

(cheering) Martin.

Yeah, Martin.

Right here on the backside.

Wow.

There it is.

The crew that we've had for this construction, the level of precision in laying of this vault is impressive at a global scale.

There are not too many vaulting experts in the world that can lay as beautifully as this.

It's exciting to be working with something that most cultures on the planet have dug earth out of the ground and fired it into units, into bricks, and then made use of it.

In almost every place, in every continent, they have some tradition of masonry.

So it is tapping into something that has a lot of universality to it.

(music continues) You know, once an artwork goes out in the world, particularly in a completely public environment, all bets are off, what people make of it.

And you can hope that it'll elicit a certain kind of response, but there's no way to guarantee that.

And the work is on its own.

The work is on its own.

I am pretty sure that it's gonna physically survive, but I hope it survives as a place that enriches, continues to enrich the public, and continues to make people aware of how special this place is.

Not just the particular spot, but Storm King itself in this region, in the Hudson Valley.

Hudson River Highlands.

(music)