Public Art Installations
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CIRCUMNAVIGATING THE CENTURY Glass mural, 42 panel 21 x 42, Clover Park Aviation Trade Center, airport lobby windows, Puyallup, WA. 2001. Commissioned by Washington State Arts Commission Architects: McGranahan Group, Tacoma, WA; Photo Credit: Russell Johnson
The imagery of this mural evolved from a front elevation of the Wright Brother’s Flyer. Cables and struts were extracted and used in the design throughout. Aviation imagery, from the central conning tower to the B-2 wing formations, was an attempt to integrate aeronautic symbolism in the same way the architect used wing forms in the rafter trusses and in many other references throughout the building. This mural happened to coincide with the centennial of the first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903.
ESCHER’S ELEVATOR 40 x 30 tower mural in the Teaching Facilities Building at Southern Utah University; Cedar City, Utah. 2008 Commissioned by Utah Arts Commission; Architect: Allen Roberts CRSA, Salt Lake City, UT
The artwork of Escher’s Elevator was meant to be nonlinear and interestingly illogical. Different perspectives confront the viewer as the ‘elevator’ rises. Dimensionally challenging, the artwork asks the viewer to continuously reorient spatially as well as intellectually as reality shifts in ascension and fall.
MILLENIAL CHRONOMETER Glass and stainless steel sculptural clock; total dimension 20 x 20 Commissioned by Everett Cultural Commission Everett, WA. 2002; Photo credit: Wendy Fagan; Architects: Zimmer Gunsel and Frasca Seattle, WA
The design of this sculptural piece was a response to the function of the Station. We wanted the shape to suggest the front of a locomotive with the clock representing the headlight. The clock itself, with its fins representing the lens of a camera, was intended to reference time as an aperture. The glass selections and design were meant to be a highly restrained architectural construction in the Pilkington curtainwall.
MILLENIAL CHRONOMETER Glass and stainless steel sculptural clock; total dimension 20 x 20 Commissioned by Everett Cultural Commission Everett, WA. 2002; Photo credit: Wendy Fagan; Architects: Zimmer Gunsel and Frasca Seattle, WA
[Alternative view]
SOLAR TSUNAMI Glass mural, Total dimension - 22 x 12, 17 panels. College of Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 2002; Architect: Paul Waters, SRG Partnership, Portland, OR
Our intention with the design of this mural was to give imagery to the oceanographic and atmospheric research function of the building. Storms, tidal shifts, tectonic movements, galactic evolution: all were invoked to create a mural representative of the college’s mission.
SCALES OF HAMMURABI Glass murals (two) 40 x 13 in 16 panels, 40 x 8 in 8 panels, Alachua County Regional Justice Center, courthouse lobby, Gainesville, Florida. 2003 Fabrication: Frank James, Micanopy, FL, Architects: Michael LeBoeuf DLR Group
The SCALES alluded to in the mural’s title evoke the first written codification of law in stone tablets in Babylon in 2000 B.C. under the rule of Hammurabi. The descending imagery in glass is meant to create a visual hieroglyphics similar to the tablets. Scales also connote the scales of justice as well as a kind of musical cuneiform. This work was designed as a signature piece for the building which is seen distinctly at night from the downtown theater district of Gainesville.
LOCOMOTION Glass mural 15 x 12 Skagit Station Lobby, Mt. Vernon, WA. 2004 Architect: Arai/Jackson, Seattle, WA
LOCOMOTION was designed as a logo-like mural for not only the transportation center, but the city as well, visible as it is from the interstate a few hundred feet away. The imagery is kinetic, alluding to a streamliner arriving at the platform, but its essential ‘dynamic deconstruction’ gives great play to the glass selections, much of which is mouthblown by Fremont Antique Glass Company and is exquisitely complex in its varying coloration.
PETRI BLOOM 32 x 7 glass mural for Oregon Art Commission, Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality and Public Health Lab, Hillsboro, OR 2008
This large mural for Oregon’s Health Lab was intended to create an artwork that reflected the biological work of the two headquarters. The design is a symmetrical crystallinge form imagined as an organic ‘bloom’.
SUMMIT 225 sq. ft. sculptural glass mural rising 40 feet above the lobby floor. Beveled, iridized and blown glasses. Highline Medical Center, Seattle, WA; Photo Credit: Allison Kogler, Eric Haley; Architect: Richard Salogga, Northwest Architectural Company. Seattle, WA 2005
SUMMIT is a mural for Highline Hospital’s Oncology Center. Its imagery was intended to be uplifting and inspirational for the patients and their families who are undergoing cancer treatments. SUMMIT refers as well to the magnificent view of Mt. Rainier which can be seen directly beneath the mural.
PARADIGM SHIFT 24 x 9 mural for the faculty lounge above main entry to the Teaching Facilities Building of Southern Utah University. Cedar City, Utah; Commissioned by Utah Arts Commission 2008; Architect: Allen Roberts CRSA, Salt Lake City, Utah
Paradigm Shift’s arch is a metaphorical as well as literal ‘bridge’ between the 19th century Normal School’s entrance of arched stone and radiating wood fanned transom to the abstraction of Escher’s Elevator and its 21st century architecture. Where Paradigm Shift is an elegantly formal symmetrical construction whose interior begins the process of fragmentation, Escher’s Elevator is a wholly modern unraveling of traditional perspectives.
QUIXOTE’S COMET Glass mural, 14 panels curving 70 x 20, leaded, textured glasses Washington State Dept. of Transportation Regional Headquarters, Tacoma, WA. 1995. Fabrication: Gordon Russ, Edison, WA; Commissioned by Washington State Arts Commission. Architects: Arai/Jackson Seattle, WA; Photo Credit: Derk Jager
This extremely large mural was designed to be the logo for the State Patrol Headquarters it houses along with their crime lab and a Department of Licensing. Visible for long distances at night, the artwork was embraced by the troopers as a dynamic and appropriate emblem.
PHOENIX MOON Glass mural, 18 x 12, beveled, textured and blown glasses, Snoqualmie, WA Fire Headquarters. 2005; Architects: TCA Seattle, WA
PHOENIX MOON was a commission for a fire station headquarters in Snoqualmie, WA within half a mile of a spectacular waterfall in the Snoqualmie Valley. The imagery was meant to evoke the falls as well as the native appellation for the area: Valley of the Moon.
BRIDGE Glass murals (two) 30 x 15 murals of antique, leaded, beveled and iridized glasses. Arlington High School, Arlington WA 2004 Commissioned by Washington State Arts Commission, Fabrication: The Glass Cottage, Smokey Pt., WA Architect: McGranahan Group, Tacoma, WA Photo Credit: Allison Kogler, Eric Haley
BRIDGE is actually two separate murals. The symbolism of bridge is a reference to the school’s architecture which features bridge walkways that lead to differing curricular components. It is also a reference to the connection between adolescence and adulthood, and to actual rivers and dikes that adjoin the town.
CELESTIAL TSUNAMI Glass room divider, 8 x 20 20 panel leaded, beveled, iridized & dichroic glass with laminated arched wood frame designed & constructed by the artist, Mukilteo Public Library, Mukilteo, Washington, 1999; Photo Credit: Derk Jager Architects: Lewis Architects Bellevue, WA
This mural is actually a dividing wall between the library’s checkout and the children’s room. The curved fir framing was designed to reference the fir beams and other woodworking of the architecture.
PASSAGE Entryway Glass mural. Total dimension 26 x 6; Connecting Link between Low income Housing Center and Senior Center, Stanwood, WA 2004 Donation; Photo Credit: Allison Kogler, Eric Haley; Architects: Dan Nelson,Design Northwest Sharon Robinson, Zervas Group, Everett, WA
PASSAGE is, quite literally, a connecting link between the old and the new, between the former high school now a Senior Center and the new Low Income Housing Apartments, and figuratively between the past and the future. The imagery is meant to evoke hieroglyphics, computer punch cards, digital circuitry, alphabets and other symbols of information undergoing radical transformation.
KALEIDOSCOPE Glass mural in a display room, 14 x 8 x 4 feet deep Gilmore Housing Project Housing Resources Group, Seattle, WA 2003; Architects: GGLO Seattle, WA; Photo Credit: Allison Kogler, Eric Haley
This project resulted when remodelling created a small window space to the street, considered the most heavily pedestrian trafficked intersection in Seattle. The client, at a loss for a solution, turned to the art community. My response to a site ordinarily inappropriate for stained glass (it is 40 inches wide from window to wall) was to line the interior with mirrors placed at vertical angles, design in ‘windows’ for passersby to view the interior space, and light the room with mirrorballs, spots, strobes and everchanging strategies to create the world’s largest kaleidoscope near the Pike Street Market. Pedestrian movement turned the kaleidoscope. [Now uninstalled.]
KALEIDOSCOPE Glass mural in a display room, 14 x 8 x 4 feet deep Gilmore Housing Project Housing Resources Group, Seattle, WA 2003; Architects: GGLO Seattle, WA; Photo Credit: Allison Kogler, Eric Haley
[Interior]
THE MOON WAS A RIVER Glass elevator tower mural 20 x 8 16 panels, Western Oregon University, Valsetz Dining Hall, Monmouth, OR 1998
Highly visible from the outside, this mural uses iridized glass to create a metallic shimmer when viewed by heavy pedestrian traffic along the corridor. From the elevator, beveled glass affords the passenger excellent visibility to the campus beyond.
LIGHTKEEPERS Glass murals (three) 12 x 5 of beveled, dichroic, iridized and antique glasses. Ogden Regional Center, Ogden, Utah. 2006. Commissioned by Utah Arts Commission. Architect: Greg Allen, MHTN Architects, Salt Lake City, Utah
LIGHTKEEPERS was designed to complement the Prairie School architecture of the Regional Center which is located in Ogden’s Historic Residential District. The three sections form one large mural in the shared conference room for all the agencies that are housed in the center, while at the same time creating a dramatic front to the entrances on 25th Street. The design was meant to contemporize an art deco/ Frank Lloyd Wright stylization while at the same time being modern and original.
BIG BANG and LITTLE BANG murals for Cascade Middle School, Vancouver, WA 20 x 15 three story main corridor window plus main entryway treatment. WA Arts Commission. Fabrication: Pam Taylor, Whidbey Island, WA Architect: Karl Johansen LSW Architects, Portland, OR 2008
BIG BANG was a response to the school’s interest in relating the glass imagery to their signature view of Mt. St. Helens. The alignment of the school was created to maximize that view and the artwork, hopefully, added a colorful and whimsical interplay. The front entryways are titled LITTLE BANG.
VESSEL Glass mural 7 x 7 for hospital chapel. Skagit Valley Hospital, Mt. Vernon WA 2007
The artwork for Skagit Valley Hospital\'s new chapel was meant to evoke that place where, at its center, anyone might find a measure of repose. A spiritual solace. A calm within a world of catastrophic forces. I do not have the words for those moments when worlds come undone. I think there are no words. In the end we would all like answers and explanations. The artwork has none. But I hope it offers some small comfort.
