Public art · Bronze · 2020
Stepping Out
A twelve-foot dancer outside the Ventura College Performing Arts Center, made at the request of the woman it honours.
- Unveiled
- 2020
- Medium
- Bronze and reinforced concrete
- Height
- 12 ft
- Where
- Performing Arts Center, Ventura College
- Honours
- Miriam Schwab, arts patron
- For
- Ventura College Foundation
The story
Her last request
Miriam Schwab was a major benefactor of the Ventura College Performing Arts Center; her estate gift of some $12 million went to the college’s instrumental music and aquatics programmes. Among her last requests, she asked that Michael O’Kelly make her memorial sculpture.
He made a dancer. She stands on a plinth outside the theatre, a violin at her side, one arm thrown up to the sky, as if she has just stepped out of the stage door into the evening.
It was unveiled in 2020, shortly before the pandemic closed the theatre she had helped to build. It is Michael’s most recent public work.
Up close
Walk around her
Credits
Who made it
A bronze this size is a team effort. The credits on the bronze plaque at her base read:
- Artist
- Michael O’Kelly
- Dancer
- Gisele Marie Tryon
- Artisans & assistants
- Marcus Trahan · Masters in Metal · Bay City Fab · Bill Geske Hauling
Visit
Free to see, any time
Ventura College, 4667 Telegraph Road, Ventura, CA 93003. She stands at the front right side of the Performing Arts Center. Come at sunset.
Public art & memorials
Honour someone with a work of art
A memorial, a gift to a campus or a city, a piece that marks a legacy. Michael works with foundations, families and institutions from the first idea to installation.
