Public art hits and misses

Proposing ideas for public art projects is a funny business. In a relatively short time you have to come up with an idea for what is potentially a huge piece of work that you could then spend months making. It's very unlike my studio practice which is more "lets see what turns up on the journey", but that contrast is one of the things I've come to appreciate and enjoy. Each project proposal is like a crazy intense exercise that, if unsuccessful, gets quickly left behind and moved on from, or if accepted becomes "the big thing" to keep working on for some time.

I just did one suc proposals for some panels to be installed in a high school in Alaska. In the end I didn't get the project but enjoyed making the proposal and samples over a rather manic few days on April. I'd been in New Zealand for most of the proposal-making time window so had been chewing over a lot of ideas but had to commit to making and presenting one in a very short time. The idea was to make forty panels for the top half of some tall columns supporting a ceiling - the panels would give the impression of light coming through a canopy of foliage. I used a simple construction of layered plywood which had a much cleaner, slicker look than my usual work - interesting to see how that turned out. I made a couple of sample panels to give an idea of what the forty individual pieces would have looked like.

As with all experiments into new areas, I could see lots of aspects that needed changing or refining, but I liked the gist of it and hope I get the chance to develop this kind of thing further for some other application. Here are some shots of the samples.