Client: VAN WERT HEALTH

Overview

A sculpture dedicated to the art of healing.
THE CENTER OF OURSELVES is a sculpture proposal that has been accepted for a future build for Van Wert Health in Van Wert Ohio. This substantial public sculpture has been put on hold until the Covid issue in Ohio is under better control.
The five stylized figures that stand as the human narrative or story of THE CENTER OF OURSELVES sculpture environment suggest in creative term three stages of life. The Male and Female figures suggest adults. The two small children suggest youth and the elderly male suggests a person who is older or aging.
These five figures mounted on four podiums visually suggest by content and gesture the following.
Male figure with outstretched arms holding a sphere high above his head represents the SPIRITUAL aspect of human life. This creative statement embraces all forms of spirituality.
The Female figure holding two sphere suggests BALANCE. Life is a constant balancing act. The balance of wandering and wondering. The challenge of maintaining balance between work and play, richness and poorness and asceticism and indulgence.
The elderly Male holding a sphere out in front of his body stands as the lifelong lesson of giving more than you take. We care, We listen, We help!

Goals

Create a contemplative figure driven sculptural statement that by scale and content creates two forms of visual attention. 1) Substantial scale and carefully engineered lighting to create a 24/7 view at a considerable distance. Desired view distance being from the hospital’s frontage roads and parking lots. This first form of this visual attention will be to design this sculpture environment to have a minimum height of 20’ tall from ground up. Height scaled to the largest figure, the male figure. Measurement from ground to the top of the sphere this male figure is holding. 2) The second form of visual attention will embrace my environment design priority for this Van wert Health hospital of creating a meditative sculpture environment. In essence, one of the goals of this THE CENTER OF OURSELVES concept is to create an accessible environment design which will allow a contemplative or meditative space. It is imperative that this sculpture environment be accessible to all and to suggest a quiet and personal respite in a very busy total hospital working environment. This meditative site design embraces the reality that health care is one of the most human professions in the world of work and would consider healing in and with a variety of creative and practical possibilities.

Process

As a working public artist and a university professor THE CENTER OF OURSELVES continues a professional design and content agenda of creating public art environments that are personal statements about a unique time and place and also inspire to bring the human narrative back into the public art world. The model and design have been accepted as a future public art project for the hospital’s main campus. This acceptance was realized thru three separate meetings and three separate stages of information, proposal and proposal changes after hospital staff input.

Additional Information

Health care defines life by quality and by preservation. THE CENTER OF OURSELVES when viewed from the second floor of the hospital atrium will present a podium foot print resembling the famous medical red cross.