Client: The Bellevue Collection
Location: Bellevue, WA, United States
Completion date: 2008
Artwork budget: $30,000
Project Team
Artist
Amber Brookman
Art Cosultant
Carol Andersn
ARTERR|A
Overview
“Primal Squares” a 64 panel piece that hangs 24 feet tall and about 6 feet wide is a stunning addition to the two story wall at the escalators at the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue Washington. The painting was first hung as a 14 foot square at the TransAmerica II building in San Francisco, California in September 2001. The piece was painted with oils over a textured background on wood panels each 15″ square, and was designed to be hung in multiple configurations.
Goals
The Bellevue Collection is a collection of art spread over three properties. I was honored to be included in this collection built around the belief that a positive relationship between art and community reveals a historical continuum and provided a legacy for future generations. My piece based on the I Ching, an ancient eastern book of wisdom fit perfectly into their overall plan.
Process
I received this commission through Arterra, in Bellevue Washington. They presented my work for the project and this piece was chosen. Originally I was to re-create a similar piece for their specific space, however for budget and timing reasons they chose to purchase and install the existing work. I worked with them to fin within their tighter budget so selling them the existing piece was paramount to meeting the budget. Negotiations over this project covered two years of planning.
Additional Information
Brookman’s project has evolved into an investigation of the similarities between the cosmology of the I Ching and that of contemporary science. “I want to open a dialogue between ancient and modern systems of knowledge,” she says. The binary structure of the I Ching (solid or broken lines) is mirrored in the binary structure of the most fundamental level of computer code (ones or zeroes). Likewise, the mathematical structure of the I Ching as 64 sets of 6 lines is similar to the structure of human genetic coding in a single strand of DNA. These parallels seem, rather than mere coincidence, to be a kind of key to structural truths upon which the universe is built.