Madison Square Park, a 6.2-acre patch of manicured greenery in the Flatiron District, has become one of New York's must-see art spaces. The current installation of sculptures by the Brooklyn-based artist Roxy Paine brings together thought provoking ideas about art, nature and industry in three colossal pieces: leafless trees and a boulder fabricated from gleaming stainless steel.

On the park's central lawn is Conjoined (left), a pair of trees that twine their sinuous branches together above a 45-foot-wide swath of turf. The tangled limbs, with their highly polished surfaces, evoke a lightning field or barren trees in winter, depending on the light.

The stately form of Defunct (below), a 42 foot sculpture of a tree consumed by disease, blends beautifully with the lush trees and plantings that shelter it. The once-vibrant specimen is now a host to fungus, which are given life by the tree's demise. Placed at the southwest corner of the park, it pays tribute to a nearby dying elm whose only sign of life is a network of spidery branches that sprout from its truncated limbs.

Erratic is a 15 foot wide boulder that refers to the geological process of glaciation, and the huge boulders called erratics that are dropped along a glacier's path. The visible welded joins on its plate-like surface perhaps refer to plate tectonics and the earth's ever-shifting layers.

Roxy Paine, whose work is in major collections around the world, created these pieces from standard sized stainless steel pipes and rods. Formed with welding torches, laser cutters, grinding and polishing wheels, the process is central to the work's industrial aesthetic, which continues throughout the installation process.

For the trees, foundations were excavated and filled with concrete and steel structures to carry their tremendous weight. The sculptures arrived on the site in pieces that were assembled by Paine and his assistant, each negotiating the spaces between the elements of Conjoined from the basket of a scissor lift (left).

After almost three weeks of labor-intensive work, the last two branches were attached. To test the alignment, Paine and his assistant each grabbed a large branch and shook hard, creating an unforgettable wash of metallic sound. I asked him what kind of winds the sculptures had to withstand. Paine replied, "One hundred miles an hour with an inch-thick coating of ice."

At the reception for the artist last night in the park (right), New York's Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin spoke of the artist's task in creating public art. "Artists work through their imagination, often creating beautiful things out of material we don't usually associate with beauty," she said. "It's their vision that makes the city a home for us all."

Three Works by Roxy Paine will remain In Madison Square Park through the end of the year. Summer park hours are 7:00 am - 11 pm. For information about the Conservancy's scheduled events, including concerts, book talks, and culinary presentations, please visit the website. Photographs by Peggy Roalf.