To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

Artist Allston Chapman watched as part of her depiction of a girl and her dog came to life Tuesday, as crafts people at the Modern Art Foundry poured molten bronze into a mold of the life-sized sculpture.

"I've done little pieces before, which is also exciting, but this is such an opportunity to get a life-sized bronze piece in a public space," Chapman said.

The piece will eventually be put on display in Riverside Park South. Seven pieces in all will be installed there for a year as part of the Model to Monument program, a partnership between the Art Students League of New York art school and the city's Parks Department.

"We have a five year commitment to bring sort of top students of merit in the field of sculpture and to teach them the process, an intensive process of making public art," said Ira Goldberg of the Art Students League of New York.

Artist Beth Allison's piece is called "River Gazers." While it's still in the works, she hopes many will gaze at it once it is in the park.

"We're getting more and more opportunities to show our work to outside people and I think this is just amazing because anyone can walk by and see it it's not even like a gallery with regular hours it's a park," Allison said.

The program's sponsors say the challenge was to come up with something that the public would respond to.

"Not just come up with something that they liked or an idea they had a long time ago but to really look at the surroundings and come to a conclusion, what do these surroundings need," Goldberg said.

The sculptures will be located in Riverside Park South between 59th and 70th Streets.

They are scheduled to be unveiled on June 24th.

There will also be a collaborative sculpture at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

For more information, visit theartstudentsleague.org.