CODAmagazine: Suspended in Space VI
Draping, dangling, and floating: design + art projects awe us from above and fill our spaces with beauty and motion.
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Photo: res.cloudinary.comMost recent stories in CODAmagazine: Suspended in Space VI
Artist Stephen Canneto and his studio are well known for public sculptures that evoke hope and communal joy. These works employ a consistent vocabulary of figures and forms that emphasize individuals coming together to achieve a collective goal. Along with the qualities of exuberance and playfulness, there is also a sense of the empowering nature of collaboration in order to fulfill a higher goal. “The work that we create is truly a group effort. I tend to think of myself as a composer-conductor because there are so many talented and skilled people who work with us to make these sculptures a reality.” says Canneto.
Anne Patterson was commissioned by Zegna’s creative director Alessandro Sartori to create an immersive installation in a former Milanese foundry on the occasion of Milan Fashion Week and the fashion house’s Fall/Winter 2020-2021 presentation. The installation is a massive suspended cube– a play of color, matter, and light– that looks solid but is actually a transparent network of fabric. Giving the material an immaterial quality, it invites viewers to engage and interact, not only with the eyes.
Created and temporarily installed for Burning Man, August 2019, Nevada, USA. Dimensions: 27′ x 59′ x 43′. Materials: Stone and steel.
Stone 27 invites you on a walk along floating stones above the ground to experience a moment of complete presence. The installation is made up of 27 floating stones each weighing 600 pounds. The stones form a circular pathway increasing in height up to 20 feet above the ground below. The artist employed industrial materials, and the brains of two structural engineers, so that the installation could stand supported by four minimal steel columns anchored to the ground without the use of foundation (required by the temporary nature of the event). Stone 27 is fully interactive and has been climbed by thousands of people.
Goals
Burning Man poses unique challenges for creating artwork. All supplies including materials, tools, power, food, and living equipment must the brought in with us. An installation has about a week to erect, a week to be enjoyed by participants, and then a few days to strike and return the area to the exact condition it was found. This means no foundations, no burying supports, and lots of pre-planning. Artwork at Burning Man should also be interactive, withstand hard sometimes abusive usage of the 70,000 participants and an unpredictable environment with winds up to 80mph. While all participants of Burning Man doing so at their own risk, safety is still a primary concern and I worked closely with the team at Burning Man on how we would present Stone 27 in a way where we felt confident of the structural safety, and an approach for personal safety.The outdoor lobby of the Los Angeles Fashion Mart is filled with 22 brightly colored interactive flowers that hang as one large upside-down bouquet. Flowers respond individually to people and collectively in a riot of sound and colored light. This project is powered entirely by an adjacent solar array making it our first “carbon free” work. It is equally as colorful day and night.
LIFT is a dynamic glass and light sculpture that is suspended in a 70 foot tall open air atrium at the City Center shopping center in White Plains, NY. Fused glass rod cloud formations are suspended from the ceiling and are lit by a Color Kinetics LED lighting system. The system was programmed to have different lighting schemes as the day shifts from sunset to day to sunrise and to night.
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CODAmagazine: Suspended in Space VI
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