Client: BL Companies

Overview

“A Nature Grid” plays off the historical perference for using square grids in interior design, the perfect concept for this architectural firm’s conference room. The fifteen 20 x 20 x2 inch square paintings are made with a mixed media of beaten abaca pulp, light fast (non-fading) pigment, and acrylic paint, and are mounted on Gator Board. The firm, which specializes in commercial design and engineering, appreciated how the colorful squares referenced everything from the square grids on the mosaic floor of the Pantheon to the square grids used by Brunelleschi in the interior of the church of San Lorenzo.

Goals

"A Nature Grid" was installed in the conference room of the architecture firm. Conferences require focus and attention; viewing nature in a gridded format evokes the colorful world for which the ultimate designed work will live and breath. The firm works with both the built and environmental environments. Combining squares, in reference to the shape often used historically in architecture, with nature as a subject, evoking the environmental practices of the firm, made sense as a subject for the fifteen, 20 x20 inch square paintings.

Process

I worked closely with the architect and CEO of the firm at the time to create the fifteen tiles. I made several trips to the firm's office location to size up the work and make sure the composition worked as a whole in the space, which featured a gallery-like background of white walls and ribbon windows.

Additional Information

As an art and architecture history professor, using historical references, in this case the square shape in a gridded pattern, delighted me as it evoked one of my favorite architects, Filippo Brunelleschi, the creator of the blue-print. Brunelleschi loved to work with squares and grids, as he did so famously in the church of San Lorenzo. By making a nod to this great architect who invented the blue-print, which would be used often in an architects conference room, I hoped to continue the conversation of art, nature, and geometry for this eager group of architects.