Client: Arts Brooksfield

Overview

In the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center in New York, I re-created my installation, which was first shown at Brookfield Place in Toronto. The banal plastic cast-offs suspended from three circular aluminum hoops depicted a massive Chandelier. Typically, a status symbol of luxury and opulence, the oversized metamorphosis seemed both wondrous and horrific. The work is 15 x 15 x 20 ft.

Goals

The artwork address the architectural space for which they are commissioned. The project involved several site visits in discerning how it can best be integrated into a particular space, utilizing existing columns and ceilings and the scale of the room. I have adapted my work to the specifications of the location, the interactions of the visual with the architectural, and cultural objectives of my client.

Process

My large-scale endeavors demand a high level of organization with a team of assistants, technical riggers, and consultants. For this particular project, I worked with both Arts Brookfield and the public. The public was invited to drop off recycled packaging from their homes during the week that I was on site preparing the piece. I incorporated the many donated objects into the finished artwork. I collected waste materials and disposable objects scrounged from neighborhood garbage bins such as water bottles, muffin tins, cake boxes, vacuum formed packaging, egg cartons, salad boxes, etc. and tie them together with monofilament into long strands or sew them into fishing nets. I have strong people skills and administrative proficiency with which to handle these complexities.

Additional Information

Water is an ambiguous element constantly morphing into myriad forms both continuous and transparent. My installation evokes both states of calm and calamity by portraying water’s power to at once nourish and annihilate, soothe and suffocate. I installed the sculpture above the famed marble staircase for one month. The round shape of the installation perfectly echoed the circular platform and stairs above which it hung. Passersby could either stand on the upper mezzanine level and view the piece straight ahead or descend the steps to the atrium and experience it from a very different angle.