Artist Douglas Kornfeld Gives Jamaica Plain A Giant Hand

"Reach" by Douglas Kornfeld sits in Jamaica Plain's Mozart Park. Click to enlarge. (Courtesy Doug Kornfeld)

Give him a hand!

Actually, Cambridge artist Douglas Kornfeld already has one. A big one.

It’s 27-feet tall and it has taken two-and-a-half years to get the work approved and into the ground. But today, Kornfeld and the Hyde Park community in Jamaica Plain are welcoming “Reach” to Mozart Park. The giant, stretched-out steel hand is meant to symbolize the immigrant experience.

“I feel a sense of pride mixed with relief that everything went well with the installation and that the sculpture fits so well in the park,” Kornfeld wrote in an email. “I’m delighted that the community is so pleased with the piece.”

It was critical to involve the community in the development of the public work, Kornfeld said, because the public is often left out of the public art process. He worked with the Hyde Square Task Force to organize workshops and created a website to keep residents in the loop.

A nonprofit writing organization for kids, 826 Boston, helped area youth come up with quotations that are engraved on the sculpture’s steel uprights. Their words reflect their experiences as immigrants or children of immigrants.

Some may recognize Kornfeld’s work. His “Ozymandias” — also known as the bid red man — greets visitors to the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln.

Erected in January, “Reach” will be dedicated today at a ceremony in Mozart Park at 4:30 p.m.