Client: Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas

Overview

Margo Sawyer’s record of integrating color and monumentality into public art made her an excellent choice to create a work to honor the New Department of Art and Art History Building on the Sam Houston State University Campus. Color is central actor in Sawyer’s public art, arranging complex unions of color in reflective luminosity, reflecting her multi-cultural background. The resulting optical play givens the viewer an intuitive experience: color as a window to our multicultural world. Sawyer designed the landscape and immersive architectural glass spiral as one. Her new work, Synchronicity of Color for Sam Houston University forms a cathedral of color inspired by the rhythm of patterns and structures reminding one of both Kente cloth weaving and our universal DNA sequence. The result is a joyous, inspirational reverie experience of space.

Leading her team, operating as Sawyer Studio, Sawyer integrated Synchronicity of Color with the surrounding landscape. The, hardscape, cast concrete benches and arch of native plantings ripples surround the architectural glass spiral, creating an immersive experience. The artwork magically appears from the plaza, the substructure invisible to the eye, as if you are walking into a stained-glass window curtain.

Goals

Leading her team, operating as Sawyer Studio, Sawyer integrated Synchronicity of Color with the surrounding landscape. The, hardscape, cast concrete benches and arch of native plantings ripples surround the architectural glass spiral, creating an immersive experience. The artwork magically appears from the plaza, the substructure invisible to the eye, as if you are walking into a stained-glass curtain walls of color and joyous reverie.

Process

It takes a village to create monumental artwork, Sawyer wishes to acknowledge and thank the architects, university team, construction crews, the glass and metal crew of Franz Mayer of Munich & Kirksey Architects, the precision stone carvers, and the landscape crew. All worked to actualize this monumental artwork. And all were excited about being part of bringing the architectural translucent spiral into existences. What better honor to create a work, Synchronicity of Color for the new Department of Art and Art History Building on Sam Houston State University Campus.

Additional Information

Sawyer is a Jack G. Tylor Regents Professor in Fine Art in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been exhibited both nationally in New York, Los Angeles, New Haven, Houston, Dallas, Austin and internationally in the United Kingdom, Italy, India, Japan, and Kosovo. Honors and awards received for her work include: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award, Japan Foundation Fellowship, the Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, and a Fulbright Grant to India and Japan. She is represented by Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas, Texas.