On September 29th, in the early morning, "Inhale/Exhale" arrived on a flatbed truck direct from Kreysler & Associates, the fabricator for the sculpture. It was like the best Christmas morning unwrapping the piece. The finish and quality of fabrication was superb, as expected from a quality fabricator like Kreysler. With the help of KAR Construction, Mr. Crane, and a last minute renting of a Grad-All, install went very smoothly. We had a consistent group of people watching the action over the course of the two hour process. Once the piece was lifted off of the truck, it was angled up and lifted into the sky....up and over the 40' tall oak trees. At 54' tall, the required crane was impressive and the operators were stellar. After a little knocking of the anchor bolts, the piece slid down soundly and was bolted down permanently to its site. Final concrete, electric, lighting, pavers, and landscape occurred over the following two weeks prior to dedication.
"Clarity" is the second of two sculptures we recently installed in the new Muriel Pollia Sculpture Garden at the University of La Verne, just north of Pomona, CA. This sculpture appears to be a cropped view of a larger circumstance. The view here is one that has two clear endpoints with a seemingly "unclear" center. The disruption at the center occurs within the confines of an invisible sphere, with the lines never crossing the edge of this three-dimensional datum. The result is a questioning of the creative vs. the logical. Of whether the precision is moving from the outside inward or from the inside outward.
Day Six was another relaxing day....mostly spent in the research library at the Nelson-Atkins. The last bit of work to complete was to position the lighting around and within the sculpture. We met James, the electrician, at the site at 8pm tonight and finished our work. With some slight tweaks and turns, all of the lights have been positioned....and the piece looks better than ever. I look forward to coming back to Kansas City for the park rededication on June 1st to see all of the park lights on and with the landscaping complete. More great photos to come at that time. Tomorrow, we finally head home to Palm Springs. By the way, Jack Stacks BBQ is the best!
Day Five was an easy one. With the piece finished, we are just waiting for the electrician to finish his wiring so that we can position the lighting on Tuesday night. We went up into one of the nearby office buildings today to take some photos looking down onto the site. As we walked into an office on the 7th floor to ask if we could take photos, everyone mentioned that they had been watching us build the sculpture. When we went down to the 6th floor to get a better angle from the corner of the building, we stopped in an office where the man that greeted us mentioned he had just been looking at a photo of the sculpture in the Kansas City Star newspaper...it was still laying there on his desk. The photo and caption are below...I'm not sure how I feel about "Flower Tower," but I'll take the photo! Look for those night photos tomorrow evening...
Today we completed the sculpture...nearly three days early. The question we were asked most today was: "How much higher are you going?" Many of the people walking by the site today were residents in the surrounding condo towers and had been tracking our progress over the last few days. In fact, our final visitor of the day came by just as we were installing the last piece on the final Layer 90, and he had been looking at the sculpture from the 11th floor. He had mentioned that from his condo, the colors of the sculpture blended to a pure gradient, smoothly transitioning from white to yellow to orange to red. There were no apparent individual parts. As he approached the sculpture for the first time, he appreciated the varying levels of detail. His sincere comments were a rewarding end to the last few days. Tomorrow, we break down the crates and, in the evening, position the lighting with James, the electrician. Check in Monday evening for some of our final photos....plus, evening photos with the lighting in place. Thank you to all of you for your supportive emails! Plus, many thanks to Susan Pfannmuller, a photographer from the Kansas City Star, who spent about an hour with us today taking some great shots and kept us entertained. We look forward to seeing the article this week in the newspaper!
The weather for Day Three was beautiful...82 degrees and sunny. We started the day at Layer 58 and ended at Layer 73. Only 17 more layers to go. At this point, we are about two days ahead of schedule. We were the only ones working at the site since it's a Saturday...it felt like our own open art studio. After building the lower half in our studio in Indio, it has been very rewarding to be working out in the open in the public realm. While we've always known that this sculpture was a public art piece, nothing prepared us for the excitement of building the sculpture as the world of Kansas City goes on around us. People were giving us thumbs up and "yee-hawing" from their cars. Almost every kid that drove by in a car stared at the sculpture. There was a group of high school girls in a limo that yelled to us from the sunroof, while a couple hours later, a group of guys stuck their head out of their own sunroof and yelled, "That thing rocks!" Building the piece over the last few days has allowed us to enter into people's lives here and has given us insight into how this sculpture will affect the people that will experience it.
With the drama and excitement of Day One behind us, Day Two was a solid workday. The weather was perfect...about 75-80 degrees with a nice breeze that felt like we were at the beach...in the midwest! We began the day on Layer 43 and by the end of the day, we were had added 30" of height and were at Layer 58...moving closer to our ultimate goal of Layer 90. Burzeen and I got into the groove today and streamlined our building process. Meanwhile, I became a pro on the scissorlift. As the piece got higher and wider, people's reactions became more evident as they drove or walked by the site. People pointed, stopped to for questions, even asked for autographs. In the afternoon, we were visited by our landscape architect on the Rescue Mission, Scott Van Sooy, his partner, Eduardo, and some of Scott's family. It was good to see a familiar face! The day ended with a walk over to the Steven Holl designed Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. The Noguchi Sculpture Garden as well as a Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt sculpture added some solid inspiration to the day.
Transformed Flower will be installed in Kansas City, MO in early May. The custom made HDPE sheets have been fabricated and the milling of the 720 parts has begun. We hope to exhibit the construction process during our open studio event that will take place in late April....stay tuned!
The Art Office was part of the Inside/Outide show at Parks Exhibition Center on the campus of the Idyllwild Academy of the Arts. The show ran from February 8-29, 2008. We exhibited Inhale/Exhale. This piece is a simple geometric transformation from a triangle to a triangle to a triangle. The tip of the triangle becomes the face of the next triangle, which then becomes the point of the next triangle. It is built out of 1" MDF, car painted glossy orange, weighs approx. 380 pounds and is 3' x 3' x 6' high.
Zone 101 at the Museum is being transformed by The Art Office. The new space will be an art lounge for all ages and will showcase a large scale collage of images from the Museum's permanent collection. There will be a library and art making area. Additionally, Zone 101 will continue to be the space for poetry readings and family events at the Museum. Construction is anticipated to be complete by mid to late April. Look for Zone 101 opening events coming soon!
Work on the new Trina Turk Residential is moving along. Construction is anticipated to be complete by April 15th. Stop by the store, which is next to Trina's existing Palm Springs boutique, to take a look at construction progress and the new design. We've used one of Trina's signature fabric patterns as inspiration for an undulating 3-D graphic that runs through one side of the store. Look for opening parties coming soon!
As part of Palm Springs Preservation Foundation's Palm Springs Re-Imagined ideas competition, The Art Office submitted a proposal for the historic O'Donnell Golf Course reinvented as the O'Donnell Public Park. Our scheme was featured in the Desert Sun and prominently in the February issue of Palm Springs Life. The proposal was exhibited, along with other projects, in the Marks Gallery at the Palm Springs Art Museum. Additionally, Phil was interviewed by Stephanie Firth for http://www.mydesert.com/. Sahar Moin and Kyle Schertzing teamed up with The Art Office to help in the design and production endeavors. Many thanks to the team and the people that commented so positively on our project!
MODERN MASTERS FINE ART, PALM DESERT CA
The Art Office's two most recent sculptures were part of the January 18th, 2008 opening reception of "Finish Fetish" at Modern Masters, including works by Andy Moses, Alex Couwenberg, Michel Tabouri, Ron Reihel, Jimi Gleason and Suzan Woodruff. The sculpture to the left is the 1/4 scale mock-up for the "Transformed Flower" arts in public places piece for the Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Park in Kansas City, MO. It is built out of the same UV-resistant HDPE, or High Density Polyethylene, that the actual sculpture will be constructed with. The piece to the right is from the "Inhale/Exhale" series and is a geometric transformation from a triangle to a triangle to a triangle. It is built out of MDF that has been car painted.
INFINITY COLUMN, PALM DESERT CA
Our most recent art in public places sculpture, "Infinity Column," was installed in Palm Desert, CA on December 27, 2007. The piece is 15'-0" high and constructed of 45 stacked layers of 4" high rusted steel. The piece transforms from the least sided polygon, a triangle, at the top to a square to a hexagon to a heptagon to an octogon and so forth until it transforms into an infinitely sided polygon, a circle, at the base. The piece is located on Dinah Shore Drive, east of Monterey and is about 1/4 mile down the road on the right hand side as part of the Pointe Monterey commercial development.
TRANSFORMED FLOWER, KANSAS CITY
Work is progressing on our "Transformed Flower" piece for Kansas City. We recently ordered 20 actual size test parts from Polymer Industries in Henagar, AL. The pieces arrived on a palette and assembled beautifully. We'll be ordering about 35 custom 2" thick sheets of plastic and the milling of the 720 parts. Install must be complete by May 1, 2008.
