In early 2019, Seattle artist Susan Zoccola installed a beautiful staircase sculpture for finance company RW Baird on the 56th and 57th floors of an office building in downtown Chicago. The warm metal sculpture, consisted of two “River” panels, one copper and one aluminum, spaced inches apart, creating a dynamic visual that changed depending on the viewer’s vantage when climbing the stairs. It was instantly a success with clients, employees, and executives alike.

“To work with textiles is to work with patterns,” says Denmark-based designer Astrid Krogh, whose sculptures transform everyday spaces into glowing, dynamic environments. Fascinated by the interplay of textile and light, Krogh has modernized the centuries-old technique of tapestry weaving with the use of thoroughly modern materials including neon, reflective metals, and optic fiber.

Today, with a repertoire of materials that includes stainless steel, corten steel, granite, concrete, cast glass, and his own invention of laminated structurally dynamic artist glass, Walter Gordinier’s capacity to pair his creations with their environs is nearly limitless. Drawn to designs that are “pure in form, distilled to their most essential gesture,” his sleek, streamlined works are designed to inspire imagination and allure to the urban plazas, healing gardens, and other sites he is commissioned to design and enhance with his site-specific sculptures.

"I regard light as a material," says artist and lighting designer Brian W. Brush’s whose scintillating architectural installations harness refractive and reflective materials to impart a sense of movement and complexity inspired by parametric design. Whether constructed from anodized aluminum, fiber optic cables, polycarbonate, or a data-driven LED lights, each takes flight from a similar concept. At their foundation is a single, autonomous component that, when duplicated hundreds or thousands of times, produces a complex and dynamic organism all its own. They also begin with a similar goal: to engage individual viewers in a shared experience, whether that be to learn something new, identify with a local landmark, or even interact with the responsive qualities of a piece itself.

“I started recognizing light as a medium in and of itself,” recalls artist Adam Jackson Pollock, whose career in custom lighting design grew out of his early years in photography and stage lighting. Fascinated with the ways light can alter or even create an environment, he says “I realized you could use it to paint emotion and experience into space.” Pursuing the notion that lighting designs can fulfill additional environmental needs, Pollock’s recent projects take responsive design to new levels.

When asked what drew him to creating large-scale blown glass lighting designs, Canadian-born glass-blower Tim deJong recalls a wintery visit to Niagara Falls many years ago. As evening fell, the frozen mist that covered the light posts began to refract into myriad colors. "The light shining on those water crystals was coming up fiber optically,” deJong remembers. “That’s when I knew I wanted to work with glass. It’s the closest thing to ice and it lasts forever.”

If you are fortunate enough to find yourself stuck in traffic with Gordon Huether, your very perception of time and space may just be altered. “Everyone has sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic,” the sculptor says by way of explaining his fascination with nature’s effect on man-made objects. “Maybe at some point you’re behind a beat-up old truck. And maybe it has stains and rust patterns on it.” Or take for example the weeds pushing up a poured sidewalk, he continues, or bird droppings splattered along an exterior wall. “Humanity is so preoccupied with making things, manipulating things,” he says. “But nature has a way of taking things back.”

Don’t be surprised if you find Susan Wink hosting an open meeting or free workshop if she designs public art… Read More