Donald Lipski

LEAFY WADER

2025 Federal Way, Washington.  

Lipski has spent some wonderful time in the Seattle area.  In 1987—working with local artists—he created an exhibition for COCA, the Center on Contemporary Art, made from materials he gleaned from the scrapyard of Boeing. 

He has been Artist in Residence at both the famed Pilckuck School of Glass up in Stanwood, WA (1990), and at The Museum of Glass, in Tacoma (2014).

Sound Transit, the Puget Sound Area’s transportation company has expanded their light rail system almost 8 miles, adding three stations.  At the station in Federal Way, a town of 100,000 people between Seattle and Tacoma, Lipski created this two-story tall glass desk lamp.  He was paying homage to this area, which is the historic center of the contemporary American glass art world.  This was largely driven by the life’s work of Dale Chihuly and the glass world he created in his wake.  

Lipski has worked with glass in one way or another for half a century.  

But this is his first substantially glass outdoor public work, 

Over the last years, as statues were being torn down across the country, Lipski started thinking about making a classical bronze statue. The newly restored historic Long Island Railroad Station in Mineola, NY seemed the perfect opportunity. He sought historical figures who would forever stand the test of time. Tapping Mineola’s role in early aviation, Lipski chose Bessica Raiche, America’s first solo woman pilot. And she holds aloft Roxey, the LIRR dog, a mutt who wandered onto the train and, adopted by the railroad workers, ended up living on it for years. Lipski learned about Roxey from Heather Hill Worthington’s wonderful children’s book, Miles of Smiles.

Once again, Lipski relied on master sculptor Christopher Collins, who modeled the statue from Donald’s drawings. Donald’s wife, artist Terri Hyland, (link to: http://www.terrihyland.com/) designed the clothing and kept watch over the details of Bessie’s face. The statue was cast by Art Castings of Colorado (link to: https://artcastings.com/) in Loveland, CO.

Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design and Long Island Railroad

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SPOT is a 4 story tall sculpture of a Dalmatian dog with a NYC Taxi (a Prius donated by Toyota!) balanced on her nose. It’s in front of NYU-Langone Medical Center’s new Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital, on East 34th St. It’s been made for children at every turn, and is an amazing hospital.

“It’s a privilege to be able to do this for the kids. I wanted to make something so astounding it would distract even those arriving for the most serious procedures, and so lovable that young patients coming back again and again with chronic conditions would see it as an old friend. I like to think that the parents, the doctors and nurses and staff, the neighbors, will all be smitten by this playful, heroic young dog doing the impossible. Art has actual healing power. That’s a fact! This is my neighborhood, and this is my hospital. I can see it from my terrace, and pass it every day. All my doctors have been there since I moved to NY in the 70s; I’ve had surgeries there, been in studies there, gone to the emergency room there, and now, have been vaccinated there. This is a special piece for me in so many ways.”

Since last June, Spot has her own mask. She wears it to protect YOU!

The Cloud, El Paso, Texas.  This sculpture arises from a sunken roundabout that also functions as a pedestrian underpass.  The Cloud is constructed from thousands of hinged, enameled, stainless steel flaps that move in the breeze.  The work is at the edge of the University of Texas, El Paso campus, which is unique for its Bhutanese architecture.  Bhutan is known as "the kingdom in the clouds."

Got Any Jacks? 2004,  Miami International Airport.  This suite of sculptures made from hundreds of fiberglass fish replicas grace more than a dozen walls in the airport’s new International Arrivals Terminal, Terminal D.  They were fabricated by Mike Kirkhart of New Wave Taxidermy, an award-winning taxidermist who has three times been given the title of World’s Best Taxidermist.