Client: Torcasso Residence
Location: Santa Fe, NM, United States
Completion date: 2012
Artwork budget: $160,000
Project Team
Architect
Lawrence W. Speck, FAIA
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Artist
Margot Sawyer, FAAR
Interior Designer
Wendy Dunnam Tita, AIA, LEED AP
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Other
Mark Macek
Macek, Furniture Company
Overview
Synchronicity of Color – Walls & Garden forms an artistic hybrid: sculpture, installation art, and architecture. The production process was a collaboration between a Larry Speck, of architects (PageSoutherlandPage) and myself. It was a conversation with the architecture, the lush power of the rammed earth walls, the stone in the polished concrete floor they all form a dialogue. The result is a dynamic movement of color. The color plays with the static, MDF colors, it is perceptual and optical play, where the color changes to an unexpected hue.
Goals
The commissioned artwork for the Torcasso Residence creates a rich dialogue between art, architecture and landscape using light, color and space. The artwork volumes are in dialogue with the rammed earth walls, subdividing living, dining and kitchen areas. They act spatially in complete harmony with the rest of the house. They take the color inspiration of the rammed earth wall one step further, incorporating colors from the sky, the light, the sunsets. The artwork intensifies the qualities of light, color and space in the landscape and the architecture making it a truly site specific work.
Process
I worked completely collaboratively with the interior designer, architect and client on the project. After the architect formulated the initial concept and basic framework for the house the interior designer and the artist joined the design team to help generate the artwork volumes. The architect proposed spatial character and interior volume dimensions and I transformed into a functional artwork. The articulation pattern and scale alludes to Synchronicity of Color at Discovery Green in Houston, the specificity of the architecture influences the color pallet that I used which is in direct dialogue with the rammed earth walls that are iconic to the building. I also worked with a landscape architect with a flow of the narrow garden and my artworks made of cast and fused glass, that capture light in a mysterious way and leads you from the house into the garden.