Martin Puryear has said that the title of this sculpture, Lookout, refers simultaneously to “a physical place, an invitation to observe and engage with the natural world, and a warning.” Renowned for his work in wood, printmaking, and large-scale public sculpture, Puryear imagined a variation of one of his iconic forms for a permanent site-specific installation in Storm King’s North Woods. Lookout comprises layers of red-clay bricks laid using thin-shell masonry techniques. Eschewing straight lines and vertical walls, however, the structure curves inward and upward, allowing entry from one side while producing a swelling form on the opposite end. The twenty-foot-tall sculpture is composed of a series of nine segments: at the open end, the first of these segments emerges visually and structurally as an arch, set perpendicularly to the ground plane. Each successive segment is set against its neighbor at an increasingly acute angle, sweeping upward until the bricks of the final segment form a dome at the summit of the artwork.

Lookout marks the artist’s first use of brick, recognizing brickmaking as a once-primary industry in the Hudson Valley and referencing the vernacular structures that dot the local landscape. The work emerged from Puryear’s exploration of traditional masonry forms, including the daring techniques of Nubian vault building without formwork, which the artist witnessed in Mali; classical Roman arches and domes; the curved and tapered forms of bottle kilns at the ceramics factories of Stoke-on-Trent, England; and the curved entablatures of the Squadron A Armory on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which seem to defy gravity. To achieve this ambitious and unconventional use of the material, Puryear worked closely with several trusted collaborators, including structural engineers, architects specializing in Guastavino vaults, kiln builders, and expert brick- and stonemasons.

Puryear used the work’s form and setting to encourage a heightened sense of presence. Facing southwest, the masonry arch frames a sweeping view of Storm King’s landscape, with the contours of Schunnemunk Mountain in the far distance. The brick surface is punctuated by a constellation of ninety circular openings created by tubes of fiberglass-reinforced concrete in varying sizes. The tubes, or oculi, act as apertures, creating pinhole vignettes of the surrounding trees and sky. The “sweet spot,” indicated by the paving pattern, enables visitors to see out of all the oculi at once.