Client: Flanner & Buchanan

Overview

This artwork was informed by memorial traditions of bringing and leaving flowers for departed loved ones. It employs uplifting, joyful, implied movements as well as imagined birds and light as metaphors for spirit and hope. It sits atop a custom-made ossuarium at Oaklawn Memorial Gardens in Fishers, Indiana. The stainless steel base measures four feet high and the rising, curved elements add another six feet to the feature’s height. Secured from within the vase-like base, 50 tubular steel “stems” curve upwards, at their ends, flower-like bird forms serve as reflectors for incorporated LED dichroic-filtered colored lights

Goals

The client wanted a unique artwork that would enhance the appearance and function of the ossuarium as well as bring a unique identity to the project and surrounding park area.

Process

The concept of birds as flowers, and the metaphors that suggests arose after the artist imagined the needs and experiences of loved one's families. After making initial sketches and models, he arranged collaborative meetings with the client, fabricator, landscape architect and ossuarium manufacturer so that together they could transform idea into product.

Additional Information

"My goal was to provide families and friends with a visual experience that helps them imagine their loved ones rising upwards, filled with love, Finding The Light" - Arlon Bayliss