Client: Ecological Design Group

Overview

The Mother Windows are an ongoing series of steel barn-door shutters designed to subtly highlight the past of the historic Rogers milk plant building. Ten laser-cut portraits of milk cows will create glowing projections at particular times of day, and travel across interior surfaces as sunlight passes through them. Each shutter is a laser-cut portrait of a named milk cow being raised by 4H participants in the region. The mother cow depicted in this prototype is a Holstein Friesian named Grimm Dom Vance.

Goals

The building owners approached me about taking a creative approach to enhancing and branding the development of this historic milk plant. Observing that the large concrete structure behaved like a camera, I proposed to honor the cows whose milk facilitated the building's operation in its window apertures, projecting their images onto the building's interior surfaces, and framing their ghostly images in the windows at night.

Process

The project was launched with a receipt of a competitive grant from the Mid-America Arts Alliance through their Artists360 program. Creative and physical access to the space was coordinated with Ecological Design Group. Fabrication and installation was accomplished in collaboration with Black Anvil Design, L&L Fabrication, and Early Bird Creative.

Additional Information

The project was fiscally sponsored through Fractured Atlas and a fundraising event to continue fabrication and expansion of this project was scheduled for April 4, 2020. Due to COVID the event was cancelled, and the project has been on hold for almost two years. It will be revived with fundraising in the summer of 2022.