Archives: Projects

Southern live oaks are icons of the American South. Our aim was to depict the trees as they might
appear lining an idyllic street in New
Orleans. The panoramic format of the work spans across a children’s play space, transforming a banal
fence into a two-sided mural. We borrowed
techniques from the classic Lite Brite toy to construct the project. Functioning like the colored pegs
of the toy, thousands of transparent acrylic squares, each the size of a playing card, form a pointillist
image of the trees. The squares are like little pieces of stained glass that refract the sun and project
colored light onto the fence. While Shady Lane honors the storybook history of New Orleans, the
shimmering squares catch the attention of kids that are drawn to a video game aesthetic.

Stainless steel ball-chain, enamel paint
“Suspension” is a name I’ve given to a series of atmospheric installation that my team and I make with
thousands of thin, painted chains that we hang in precise proximity to one other. When I visit Utah, my
eyes constantly comb the landscape; I felt compelled to marry some of that mesmerizing landscape to a
Suspension at Davis Tech. I began Above the Ploughman’s Highest Line with an aerial image of the shore
of the Great Salt Lake which I then abstracted to become a stack of horizontal bands that permeate the
Suspension.

Commercial Bay, Auckland, New Zealand

Johnson County Courthouse, Olathe, KS

Our intent is for the artwork to unfold during the visitor’s passage by foot from their parking spot to the terminal; it is inherently linked to one’s journey. The artwork will be distributed through the light well as a series that increases in size as one moves towards the terminal. The piece will be made up of separate hanging forms that each seem to grow downward as an expansion on the previous form. The experience of the artwork will be similar to driving along a palm tree lined boulevard or landing on a runway. Each of the forms will visually come together to make a colonnade that crescendos or tapers, depending on the traveler’s direction.

How do we make artwork for an audience of biologists if we ourselves are not biologists? How do we confront this challenge within the context of an art practice where we explore structure and materiality rather than representation?

Organic Dreams Synthetic Means grew out of an extensive investigation into the material properties of fiberglass rod. This was our first experience working with the material, so, we felt like scientific researchers making hypotheses about its potential for sculpture, then testing each through full-scale mock-ups and models.

Our design process began with straightforward questions – what kinds of structure and forms can we make with fiberglass rods that we couldn’t accomplish with other materials? In other words, what do the rods want to become? Why are they unique and what formal and structural proclivity does this particular material have? We then asked questions relating the site: how can we make a structure that holds its own within the busy public space at the Advanced Teaching and Research Building?

Rather than accepting the flat plane of the wall as a backdrop for a two-dimensional artwork or making a sculpture that rests on the ground plane, we asked how we could engage the space in an unexpected way by making a work that launches from the wall, projecting into the room and over the heads of viewers. What does it mean for a sculpture to project off of a wall twenty feet? Our next step was to ask how to coax form that is suggestive of several biological entities from this highly engineered sculptural structure.

Although it is clearly synthetic – a man-made product of design and fabrication, the structure and materiality have affinities to several biological systems and processes. For example – the growing shoot tip of a plant, a branching network of capillaries in a vertebrate circulatory system, or a papilla on the surface of a leaf, to name a few.

For the biologist as well as the layman we hope to evoke multiple references. The association of the form with particular biological structures will be dependent upon the viewer, their discipline within biology, and their level of experience and understanding of the biological world. Organic Dreams Synthetic Means should not be viewed as a biological model of a specific entity, but instead, be left open to interpretation by the viewer regardless of their field of inquiry.

96 Variations on a Phylogenetic Tree is an art installation in the Bessey Hall atrium. It developed through a collaborative process with University Scientists. Together, we studied how we might fill the atrium with a representation of the Phylogenetic Tree, also known as the Tree of Life.

In biology, The Tree of Life shows evolutionary relationships among all organisms. It is a diagram that branches upward from “a common ancestral life-form”, or the origin of all species. The branches, known as “taxa” to biologists, are groups of closely related species. Three “domains” (Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucaryota) encompass the taxa.

We made our tree in stainless steel ball chain. Thousands of individual chains interconnect like a web, and are suspended within the atrium. The chains, each hanging from two points, represent the branches. Three contrasting colors indicate the three domains. Near the bottom of the installation, a single vertical chain represents the common ancestor.

Ball chain is very thin, a few strands would look insubstantial within the four story atrium. To give the tree a stronger visual presence, we made 96 variations using five and a half miles of chain. Each variation is slightly different in scale and composition than the others.  Multiple iterations of the tree give the installation depth within the narrow atrium but they also function conceptually as an acknowledgement that scientific model is a snapshot of contemporary understanding.  Scientific knowledge is continually evolving by reevaluating existing models while developing new ones.  Science itself, is iterative.

20093 segments of chain, each unique in length and location, comprised the installation.  To accommodate so much intricacy, we worked with a computer controlled machine to cut the ball-chain into unique segments then link the segments in a precise order to make the individual chains.  The chains interconnect and when under the effects of gravity while hung in the atrium, form the Tree.

The resulting artwork is a dynamic system in equilibrium:  the weight of an individual chain influences the shape of the entire tree while the shape of the entire tree, in turn, impacts the shape of the individual chain.  As an artwork, it is a visual metaphor for the delicate balance among all living things.  It will invite us to better appreciate the inter-relatedness of humans with the Tree of Life, identify our role in the environment, and help us to see our responsibility for the well-being of the planet.