Artist Behind JFK Airport Sculpture Series Finds A Home In Bath Beach

The Wall Street Journal spotlighted Bath Beach last week, thanks to one high-profile sculptor who calls the oceanside community his home.

Subscription is required to read the full article, so we’ve grabbed a few of the most evocative lines:

For sculptor Dimitar Lukanov, a small apartment by the ocean, in the far reaches of Brooklyn, has become a creative refuge away from his studio where he draws inspiration for his work.

The neighborhood is Bath Beach and the proximity of the ocean evokes its history as a resort area in New York City named after the English spa town of Bath. From his apartment, Mr. Lukanov can easily walk to the shore and the nearby Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

“The charm of this place feeds me enormously,” says Mr. Lukanov, a Bulgarian-born artist who has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. “This space is strictly mine. It’s a hidden gem amongst a neighborhood that is rather unfamiliar to Manhattanites,” he says.

Born to a pair of neurologists in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Lukanov told the WSJ that he knew he would be a sculptor at age 6. He studied art in Paris before making the move to New York in the early 1990s. After spending many years in Harlem — which he said has become “too gentrified, too recognizable” — Lukanov purchased a 650-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in Bath Beach in 2008.

Though Lukanov also has a studio in upstate New York, he comes to the southwest Brooklyn neighborhood to sketch and to create tiny models of his installations.

“This is the laboratory where I test their existence,” he told the WSJ. “I need the distance.”

His large-scale sculptures can be viewed around the world, and the artist is currently working on public art pieces that will be displayed in Utah, South Carolina, and Maryland.

One of his most recognizable works is a four-piece, steel-and-aluminum series commissioned for John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 4. Above, Lukanov demonstrates how small, delicate branches come together to create “History of Time” — a massive, forest-like structure and the focal point of the series.

See more of Lukanov’s work here.