Alan Binstock, a well-known Mount Rainier architect, and sculptor who was once named Hyattsville Wire, readers’ favorite local artist, died on Oct. 29 of complications from surgery. He was 77.
A native of the Bronx, Binstock worked as a jeweler, carpenter, and yoga instructor and spent time at an ashram in Connecticut when he was young, saying in an interview once that he and his wife, Carol, were “children of the ’60s.”
He came to Route 1 to study architecture at the University of Maryland, then got a job as an architect at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, living in Mount Rainier.
Binstock had long been an artist working in stone, glass, and steel to create luminous multicolored sculptures. His influences ranged from the architect Le Corbusier, deep-space photos he encountered at NASA, and Eastern metaphysics.
“I want my work to catalyze a sense of excited inquiry and quietude, and, hopefully, a moment of self-reflection,” he wrote once in an artist’s statement.
Many of Binstock’s public art can be seen around the Route 1 corridor, including the colorful “Ribbon of Life” at University Town Center in Hyattsville that is evocative of strands of DNA.
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