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Walter Gordinier’s Large-Scale Sculptures Imbue Their Sites with “An Invitation to Stay”
Today, with a repertoire of materials that includes stainless steel, corten steel, granite, concrete, cast glass, and his own invention of laminated structurally dynamic artist glass, Walter Gordinier’s capacity to pair his creations with their environs is nearly limitless. Drawn to designs that are “pure in form, distilled to their most essential gesture,” his sleek, streamlined works are designed to inspire imagination and allure to the urban plazas, healing gardens, and other sites he is commissioned to design and enhance with his site-specific sculptures.
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Romancing the Stone: The Enduring and Elegant Creations of Master Stone Carver Marcel Mächler
Whether he is engraving inspired quotations onto the gleaming walls of a state capital, carving exquisite objects from marble for private gardens, or restoring historical statues that have succumbed to the forces of time, master stone carver Marcel Mächler’s craft requires patience and precision. “The physical intensity of carving stone is a real workout and the need to remain continually focused as the work proceeds is true mental exercise. No matter what your emotional state, you have to be totally present with the stone and the tools.” In an era when the traditional trades of maker-culture are fading, artist-craftsmen like Mächler seek to maintain a lived connection with the past. "Stone carving is perhaps the oldest of the arts. When I am working on a project I often think about all of the people who have come before me. Each of them had this special connection with stone." The relationship of a stone carver to his materials is one of deep devotion.
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Sites of Visual Inquisitiveness: Mike Hansel’s Large-Scale Outdoor Metal Sculpture Invites Collaboration, Relatability, and Wonder
While Mike Hansel’s early works were likely to appear in museums and galleries, today his large-scale outdoor metal sculptures increasingly populate public—and decidedly accessible—sites. “People will say, ‘Wow! What’s that made of?’ or ‘How’d you get that to bend that way?’ and come up to touch them,” says the Rhode Island-based artist. “I like to listen, anonymously, to the comments people make. It’s a great way to hear honest appraisals of the work."
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From Urban Media Gestures to Spatial Micro-Meditations: Brian W. Brush Creates Geometric Designs of Light, Color, and Form
"I regard light as a material," says artist and lighting designer Brian W. Brush’s whose scintillating architectural installations harness refractive and reflective materials to impart a sense of movement and complexity inspired by parametric design. Whether constructed from anodized aluminum, fiber optic cables, polycarbonate, or a data-driven LED lights, each takes flight from a similar concept. At their foundation is a single, autonomous component that, when duplicated hundreds or thousands of times, produces a complex and dynamic organism all its own. They also begin with a similar goal: to engage individual viewers in a shared experience, whether that be to learn something new, identify with a local landmark, or even interact with the responsive qualities of a piece itself.
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Crafting Light: Custom Lighting Design by Adam Jackson Pollock and Fire Farm
“I started recognizing light as a medium in and of itself,” recalls artist Adam Jackson Pollock, whose career in custom lighting design grew out of his early years in photography and stage lighting. Fascinated with the ways light can alter or even create an environment, he says “I realized you could use it to paint emotion and experience into space.” Pursuing the notion that lighting designs can fulfill additional environmental needs, Pollock’s recent projects take responsive design to new levels.
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Art as Translation: Konstantin Dimopoulos’ Art Installations Tackle Complex Concepts with Visual Language
“Trees don’t care if they are blue,” says conceptual and social artist Konstantin Dimopoulos discussing his wildly successful environmental art installations, The Blue Trees. “They just don’t want to be cut down.”
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Wimberley Glassworks’ Custom Blown Glass Installations Complement Space and Place
When asked what drew him to creating large-scale blown glass lighting designs, Canadian-born glass-blower Tim deJong recalls a wintery visit to Niagara Falls many years ago. As evening fell, the frozen mist that covered the light posts began to refract into myriad colors. "The light shining on those water crystals was coming up fiber optically,” deJong remembers. “That’s when I knew I wanted to work with glass. It’s the closest thing to ice and it lasts forever.”
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Telling Stories: Gordon Huether’s Large-Scale Installations Tackle Time, Space and Identity
If you are fortunate enough to find yourself stuck in traffic with Gordon Huether, your very perception of time and space may just be altered. “Everyone has sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic,” the sculptor says by way of explaining his fascination with nature’s effect on man-made objects. “Maybe at some point you’re behind a beat-up old truck. And maybe it has stains and rust patterns on it.” Or take for example the weeds pushing up a poured sidewalk, he continues, or bird droppings splattered along an exterior wall. “Humanity is so preoccupied with making things, manipulating things,” he says. “But nature has a way of taking things back.”
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Form, Flow, and Essence: Rosetta’s Bronze Animal Sculptures Capture Grace in Motion
Years before she cast her bronze animal sculptures, Rosetta had been honing the “stylized realism” that characterizes her work. A… Read More
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Collaborating with Nature & Science: The Eco-Art of Stacy Levy
“I think art can play a much bigger role in solving environmental issues,” says Stacy Levy, whose eco-art harnesses the natural forces of rainwater, plant roots, and microbes to help tell the “ecological story” of a site and create solutions for storm-water and water pollution issues.