In 2023, four monumental chandeliers by Newark-born artist Willie Cole hung above the Park Avenue median between East 69th and East 70th Streets. Built from 9,000 discarded plastic water bottles, the temporary installation turned an everyday container into intricate public sculpture. TheNakedNYC documented the works on Park Avenue, including their scale, repeating forms, and sharp contrast with the surrounding flowers and buildings.
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Instagram: Park Avenue Chandeliers
What to Know
Four Monumental Works
Willie Cole created 3000 Buddha, Liberty Lantern, Soul Catcher, and Dirt Devil as a four-part installation. The works hung over the landscaped median between East 69th and East 70th Streets through the end of 2023.
Nine Thousand Bottles
Together, the sculptures used 9,000 discarded plastic water bottles. Clear containers became rings, tiers, and sweeping outlines that read as chandeliers from across the avenue.
Three Thousand Buddhas
3000 Buddha used 3,000 bottles. Each held a Buddha image printed on plastic with weather-resistant ink, turning one repeating object into a dense field of figures.
Liberty in Every Bottle
Liberty Lantern placed images of the Statue of Liberty inside its bottles. The familiar symbol repeated across transparent material, connecting a New York landmark with a container made for water.
Repetition Builds the Form
Cole compared a bottle to a cell: one modular unit gains new meaning when repeated as part of a larger whole. That principle lets identical containers create texture, volume, and movement without hiding what they are.
Park Avenue Reversed
Chandeliers usually hang inside Park Avenue apartments. Cole moved that symbol of private elegance outdoors, suspending it above a public median where traffic, buildings, flowers, and pedestrians became part of the setting.
Beauty Meets Waste
From a distance, the clear bottles catch light like glass. Up close, their familiar shape remains obvious. The tension between attraction and discarded material is central to Cole's idea of turning trash into something that can teach.
A Newark Water Story
Cole's bottle sculptures connect the environmental damage of single-use plastic with the need for safe drinking water. They also carry the memory of Newark's lead-water crisis, when many residents depended on bottled water.
Built Through Collaboration
The Park Avenue works grew from Cole's 2022-2023 residency at Express Newark, Rutgers-Newark's center for socially engaged art and design. Students and Newark residents helped prepare bottles by drilling them so they could be connected with wire.
Everyday Objects, New Meaning
Cole has long assembled irons, shoes, bicycles, water bottles, and musical instruments into sculpture. His work uses familiar objects to examine consumer culture, identity, memory, and the way value changes when an object leaves daily use.