A 16-Foot Bronze Sculpture Just Arrived at King's Bend Park — and the Story Behind It Is Pittsford

On October 10, someone pulled away a ruby-red sari from a 16-foot column at King's Bend Park in Pittsford, and the Terrafly sculpture was visible for the first time. That's how this kind of unveiling works when it means something — not with a ribbon, but with cloth that carried significance before the bronze was even seen.

Terrafly stands near the pond at King's Bend Park, 170 West Jefferson Road, surrounded by freshly planted garden beds and new seating areas installed for the occasion. The 19-acre park now has a bronze figure in a near-handstand, balanced atop a slender column — a body that reads simultaneously as grounded and airborne. The title presses the two states together: terra, the earth, and flight.

The Dogra Art Foundation and Popli Design Group covered all costs. The town of Pittsford contributed a few hours of staff time.

Town Supervisor Bill Smith called it "a special and unique gift for our residents." That phrasing is worth sitting beside for a moment — a 16-foot internationally exhibited bronze sculpture, installed, landscaped, and fully funded by a community foundation, now permanently accessible on a walking path any Pittsford resident can reach.

K.S. Radhakrishnan is an internationally acclaimed Indian contemporary sculptor whose works are held in public collections worldwide. His bronze figures are characterized by gravity-defying forms — limbs extended, bodies caught mid-movement, shapes that suggest purposeful motion through space.

Terrafly is the first large-scale outdoor installation by Radhakrishnan in the Rochester region. For most visitors to King's Bend Park, this will be an introduction to his work. The sculpture doesn't require background to read: you see a figure not falling but launching, a body that has already chosen flight. The title confirms what the form argues first.

Dr. Vikram Dogra practiced radiology at the University of Rochester for 50 years before retiring. He and his wife Nalini founded the Dogra Art Foundation to do something specific: put South Asian art into the public landscape of western New York — not in a gallery behind an admission desk, but on a path where you encounter it on an ordinary afternoon.

The foundation already has an endowed lecture series at the Memorial Art Gallery called "Bridging the Continents Through Art" and commissioned a large-scale mural there, Illusionary Odyssey. The New York State Senate honored Dogra for his contributions to promoting South Asian art and cultural heritage.

Dogra has stated plainly what the work is for. "If they understand our culture," he told WXXINEWS at the unveiling, "then they will not look at us as a foreigner. They will accept us as part of the community."

Terrafly is the first of at least five sculptures the foundation plans to place across the Finger Lakes region. A companion piece is already in discussion with the Town of Brighton.

King's Bend Park is at 170 West Jefferson Road. Terrafly is there now.