Located in the mixed-use Manzano Mesa neighborhood near Kirtland Air Force Base, the newly constructed New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (NMSBVI) Early Childhood Program offers educational programs designed for Albuquerque area infants and children through six years of age who are visually impaired. The mission of NMSBVI is to provide the training, support and resources necessary to prepare all children in New Mexico who are blind and visually impaired, including those with multiple impairments, to participate fully in their families, communities, and the work force, and to lead independent, productive lives. The NMSBVI Early Childhood Program, founded in 1974, is a satellite program of the residential school in Alamogordo. The program serves approximately 75 students from the Albuquerque metro area. All are blind or visually impaired. Many have multiple disabilities.

The committee anticipates that the artwork commissioned for this project will be a destination; not only for students, faculty and staff, but also for visitors to the campus. The commissioned artwork will be highly interactive by providing a multisensory experience which will engage the students of the school and members of the blind and visually impaired community.

While developing his proposal for the New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired Early Childhood Program, Matthew Geller set out to create a work that would foster community by creating a destination where anyone who uses the plaza in front of the school can gather, relax and interact. This piece of public artwork will be accessible, interactive, and experiential for the faculty, staff, parents, visitors and all of the school children.

The Huddle will consist of a wavy flying-carpet-like perforated stainless steel roof, with a surface pattern that mimics the silhouette of desert grasses, and will create a large area of shade in front of the main entrance to the school. Three stainless steel tree-like columns will support the roof. The columns will have multi-colored surfaces created by heating the stainless steel and will be bumpy, yet smooth and tactile. A hybrid park bench/porch swing will hang from the roof by aircraft cable. The swing will be designed to seat four to six people, and to accommodate two children’s wheelchairs. Above the roof, fan-shaped stainless steel desert grasses will turn in the wind like a whirligig, creating a gentle whooshing sound.

Excerpt from: Commissions, New Mexico Arts, Art in Public Places

Seemingly constructed from parts salvaged from the Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS), Nautical Swing provides a place where up to a dozen people can relax, converse, and enjoy the view while gently swaying on a circular bench that is protected from the sun and rain by a glass overhead roof. Unlike traditional straight park benches, this circular design —a park-bench/porch-swing hybrid—fosters interaction and conversation.

Mirroring the redevelopment of the HPS site itself, Nautical Swing references the past, the present, and the future. The brushed stainless-steel columns and beams mimic the structure of the historic dry-dock and gantry crane. The roof structure looks as if it could once have been part of Navy Base Laboratory buildings. The bench is also stylistically similar to the new park benches that will be installed throughout HPS. The roof glass, which is angled toward the south, is clear at night and automatically tints in the daytime—offering protection from ultraviolet light, rain, and the glare of the sun.

At night, LED lights located under the bench subtly illuminate the structure, making the setting as seductive and romantic as it is in the day. The LED lights and automatically tinting glass are powered by three solar panels on the roof.

Employing an economy of means, Nautical Swing creates a celebratory park feature and a beautiful spot for neighbors to gather. The work is playful, romantic, and as entertaining as it is functional.

Nautical Swing requires minimal maintenance. It is comprised of a brushed stainless-steel infra-structure, a treated-wood bench, and laminated safety-glass modules that can be easily replaced if necessary. The ball and socket design restricts the arc of the bench so that its swing is limited to a safe moderate sway. A structural engineer will certify the design and fabrication.

The work will be delivered as a “kit of parts” so that it can be easily assembled in its temporary site, then disassembled, moved, and reassembled in its permanent site.

Materials: stainless steel, wood, self-tinting laminated safety glass, LED lights, solar panels.

Dimensions: 12’ x 20’ x 20’ (HWL)

Three 32-foot-tall perforated stainless steel Bald Cypress trees (and their knees) are the visual and tactile focal points of Beach Day—the Zoo Miami 10,000 sq. ft. Children’s Play Area. The powder-coated, crayon-colored trees will bloom mist and create an ever-changing giant cloud of fog that hovers 12 feet above the ground. The mist gives the Play Area an aura of mystical otherworldliness punctuated by occasional rainbows created by the sun refracting through the mist. The enchanted fog is in a constant state of flux, sensitive to the slightest changes in wind, temperature, and humidity.

Associations with fog are abundant: it can be romantic, eerie, disorienting, or cinematic, and it is also ephemeral and difficult to manipulate, particularly in an outdoor setting. The misting cypress trees will function like a barometer: the condition of the fog is, in part, determined by fluctuations of weather. Visitors are made acutely aware of these varying states, from the direction and strength of the wind to changes in humidity.

In this and other ways the work is inexorably connected to nature, yet separate from it. In contrast to the Play Area’s palm trees and the large array of trees that populate Zoo Miami, the angular metal trees are obviously manufactured objects. However, their steel trunks and limbs are laser cut with an abstract bark pattern, while small round openings are reminiscent of tree knots. The three cypress trees are both commanding and mischievous; their plumes of white fog can appear slightly menacing, yet children can hardly resist the temptation to frolic in their mist.

The cloud of mist also has important practical applications as it offers shade and functions as an outdoor air conditioner lowering the air temperature up to 20°, offering a respite from the heat. While it might be 90° in the rest of the Zoo, the temperature in most of the Play Area will only be 75-80°.

The fuchsia-, burnt orange-, and dandelion-colored trees are further integrated into the site by hosting interactive rain heads that shower water down and are kid-controlled by valves located on cypress knees adjacent to the trees. In addition, “Leapers” shoot glass-like rods of water from the ground into the cloud. The water returns to earth as a light shower. Mist also emanates from many of the cypress knees, allowing children and adults to revel directly in its refreshing cool, moist air. In addition to the visual and tactile elements, the trees sing with subtle white noise produced by the air and water rushing through the trees’ 600 tiny brass nozzles. Like a fountain in a park or a lobby, the sound partially masks the cacophony of voices familiar in any playground environment. A degree of calm mediates the frenetic sounds of excitement.

Recalling the backyard treehouse, the cypress trees anchor one end of each of the three shade sails that swoop across the site offering protection from the sun.

Some might consider the Play Area’s mist cloud as the now vaporized “missing” center section of the Main Entrance cloud roof and the cypress trees as having mischievously escaped from the Florida Exhibit, assuming new visual, cooling, and interactive roles in the Play Area.

Introduction

While developing the proposal, I immediately set out to integrate the public artwork with the Town Branch Trail and create an environment that would be a respite and romantic—a place where people would want to gather, relax, and perhaps cool off. As in previous works, I sought to augment and activate existing elements of the site and make the site itself an essential element of the work. All these elements will combine to create a work that is is playful, romantic, and as entertaining as it is functional.

Pepper & Tar, a hybrid bridge-gazebo-fountain suspended over the Town Branch, is constructed from materials that reference the defunct distillery, its water tower and the rail line. The work celebrates the Town Branch, the Lexington distillery industry, and the new Trail, while providing a bridge across the Town Branch, a place sit and relax, and a means to cool off under work’s waterfall.

Location

The current proposal offers two possible sites—one adjacent to the Distillery District water tower and the other adjacent to the abandoned Pepper Distillery warehouse—although the work can be adapted to almost any site along the Town Branch Trail.

Description

A tinted-glass-roofed gazebo-fountain with two benches that can gently sway hovers above the Town Branch. It is connected to each bank by wooden walkways. The entire structure is supported by what looks like long-ago abandoned railroad tracks. A pipe cantilevering from the Pepper Distillery water tower (or the Pepper Distillery warehouse) connects to a weathered tall vertical steel tank at the north entrance to the Pepper & Tar walkway on the bank of the Town Branch. A pipe built into the walkway railing runs from the tank to two pipes above the glass roof of the structure. Small holes in the top of the roof pipes allow tiny streams of water, like an oscillating garden sprinkler, to shoot vertically toward the sky. The water rains back down on the glass roof. Some water runs across the inner two sections the roof and cascades down through a gap in the center of the roof, creating a waterfall in the middle of the structure, thus separating the two benches with a thin wall of water. Simultaneously, some water runs down the outer two sections of the roof, cascading off the west and east edges and into the Town Branch below. The changing wind affects the distribution of the water on the roof and thus there is a constant fluctuation in the flow between the waterfall in the middle and the water flowing directly into the Town Branch. The waterfall provides visual and sound elements and, if one chooses, a way to cool off in the summer heat. The gently swaying benches, the view, and the sound of the water bring a sense of tranquility as one hovers above the Town Branch. In a study published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America in December 2008, the five least unpleasant sounds were found to be baby laughter followed by “water flow”, “small waterfall”, “bubbling water”, and “running water”. (Prochink, George. In Pursuit of SIlence, New York: Doubleday, 2010. p.84.)

At night, LED lights hidden under the floor and the roof softly illuminate the structure and the water maintaining both a romance and a safe environment.

In the winter a small gutter seals the roof slot in the middle of the roof and diverts the water into the Town Branch. When the temperature drops below freezing the roof is covered by a thin layer of ice and icicles hang from the east and west edges of the roof.

Employing an economy of means, Pepper & Tar creates a celebratory Town Branch Trail feature and a beautiful spot for people to gather, relax, cross the Town Branch, and enjoy the refreshing waterfall. The work enhances the Town Branch Trail and fosters the developemnt of the Lexington Distillery District redevelopment plan.

Proposal Coming Soon

The mixed residential and industrial neighborhood of Nottingham is an unusual site for a public artwork. It does not host the type of site one generally associates with public art—large parks, public buildings or corporate plazas. The lack of a traditional context, the request that the work have a relationship to the City of Cleveland’s Division of Water, while also providing an amenity for the neighborhood, make this a particularly challenging endeavor. Furthermore, given that this is in many ways an isolated neighborhood as it lacks retail establishments that attract visitors this will not be so much a public artwork, but rather a neighborhood artwork.

Public Art Project Description Coming Soon

The facility will constitute an adaptive reuse of a former Home Depot, and will house the municipal court and also provide space for a police substation. The footprint of the facility is 108,000 square feet, and is sited on a high elevation near the interstate highway (IH-35) in north central Austin. The scope of this project is to provide 66,000 square feet of renovated space to include general administrative areas, prosecutors’ offices, judges’ offices, a large courtroom, medium courtrooms, marshals’ offices with holding rooms and public waiting areas/rooms, as well as several separate, designated spaces to serve as a police substation within the facility. The substation will require 26,000 square feet of conditioned office space, community meeting space, report-taking space and public service counter. Of the remaining 16,000 square feet, some or all of that space may be used for commercial or community rental space.

There will be shared common space and infrastructure to accommodate visitors and staff of both the municipal court and police substation. The site work will include parking for 600 secured and unsecured spaces. The facility will be located within the St. Johns neighborhood of Austin, at IH-35 and St. Johns.

Austin Art in Public Places