art

High above Washington Square, visitors to Locks can now get a dead-on view of the city skyline (as well as some great art) at the gallery's new rooftop sculpture garden. George Segal's white, feathery dancers twirl in a circle, an homage to Matisse's blue ones. Anthony Caro's welded-steel, brick-red grid spreads across another swath of the roof. Isaac Witkin's Rapunzel Tree, with its flowing lines and airy voids, sits regally on the far side of the space, next to a cluster of benches for contemplative visitors. With greenery on all sides, the sculpture garden has the potential to be a sweet retreat.

For the first round of rooftop work, "luckily everything fit in the elevator," says gallery owner Sueyun Locks, laughing, but plans are in the works for larger and logistically more ambitious installations that would call for a 50-foot crane. Locks hopes to rotate the work twice a year in spring and fall.

Locks and Isaac Witkin met in the late 1980s when she invited the sculptor to lecture one of her classes at Stockton; soon after, she got wind that Witkin lived nearby and invited him to be represented by the gallery. Fifteen years and several solo exhibitions later, Witkin is taking a break from installing the 1,100-pound Rapunzel Tree on Locks' roof on a sunny Friday afternoon. The Johannesburg-born Witkin, who lives on blueberry farm in South Jersey equipped with its own foundry, is accustomed to seeing his often large-scale work in the great outdoors (at Storm King Art in New York and Hamilton, N.J.'s Grounds for Sculpture). This more intimate setting is a chance for local audiences to see Rapunzel's bronze shine under Philly sun — and clouds. Witkin says he's fascinated by the way his work looks during different times of day and the changing of the seasons. "Le Corbusier said, 'All forms are born in the light,'" says Witkin. "I'm always aware of how light animates a piece."

On view in the gallery itself is an exhibit curated by Karen Wilkin surveying modernist sculpture and encyclopedically subtitled "Joined, Modeled, Cast, Carved, Poured, Painted." Works include Jon Isherwood's snakelike marble The Voluptuary and Mia Westerlund Roosen's felt-and-resin Dervish, which looks like it could get up and scurry across the gallery floor at any moment.

Sculpture Garden, opening reception Fri., Sept. 9, 5:30-7:30 p.m., then open Saturdays 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and by appointment; "Recent Modernist Sculpture," through Oct. 8, Locks Gallery, 600 Washington Sq. South, 215-629-1000.