Harold Kimmelman; artist

Harold Kimmelman, 90, of Wayne, a Philadelphia artist whose metal sculptures adorn the city's parks, died Monday, Oct. 7, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the Quadrangle in Haverford.

"It's hard to walk more than a few blocks in Center City without stumbling on one of his sculptures," said his son Jonathan.

Mr. Kimmelman was born in North Philadelphia and graduated from Central High School. He studied in the 1950s in Provincetown, Mass., under the painter Henry Hensche. He then returned to Philadelphia to pursue sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

At a time when artists were pushing the boundaries of the medium and abandoning strict representation, Mr. Kimmelman sculpted works that were softly innocent in style, his son said.

At various times, he depicted images of a girl playing hopscotch, a grocer lifting a cereal box, and boys teetering on a fence.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Mr. Kimmelman received large public commissions in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

They included a 20-foot giraffe made from twisted stainless steel bars for the Dunks Ferry Recreation Center; kangaroos in the same medium for Society Hill; and the "book" on Drexel University's campus in West Philadelphia.

His Man Helping Man, sculpted in 1976, was installed at the headquarters of the American College of Cardiology in Washington.

In 1977, he was commissioned to fashion a sculpture for the then-new Gallery. The piece was a 25-foot column of stainless steel called Burst of Joy.

"I strive to portray a spirit and an energy flux in sculpture," Mr. Kimmelman said on his website, www.hksculpt.com/.

"I usually prefer to work directly with metal, developing shapes by heat and pressure, tension and compression. My tendency is to polish to a mirrorlike finish."

His later works, more modest in scope, were neon-lit decomposing forms, and sculptural interpretations of the drawings of the German artist Heinrich Kley.

Mr. Kimmelman's work was displayed at the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill and other galleries in Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey.

A longtime resident of Wayne, he maintained a studio on West Carpenter Lane in Mount Airy.

Surviving besides his son are his wife, Joyce; another son, Lee; and four grandchildren.

A memorial service will be at 1 p.m. Friday, Oct. 11, at the Quadrangle, 3300 Darby Rd., Haverford. Burial is private.

To view Mr. Kimmelman's works, visit http://www. philart.net/artist.php?id=120