Annually, the Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review recognizes outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country and beyond. The projects are selected and presented by a jury of three professionals who represent different aspects of the public art field, including artists, administrators, and other public art allies. New this year, the PAN Advisory Council curated the selected 49 selected projects for 2018 under five unique themes to broaden the exposure of the selected works on ARTSblog and social media, and to provide context to the works through national trends and themes that are impacting the field today.

Nature and Systems

At the forefront of the current dialogue across the nation and around the globe are questions concerning how we negotiate with the world around us to address the growing concerns of resource allocation, preservation, and climate change. The pursuit and development of the policies, systems, and infrastructure needed to provide long term sustainable solutions to these issues reaches across multiple fields from the political to the scientific and serves as inspiration to many of the 2018 PAN Year in Review projects. Though the materials, execution, and duration are all unique, these projects are unified by the role of the artist(s) in translating the collective experiences and stories of our essential ecosystems and habitats into personal narratives of site.

Life of Tree by HYPERSONIC + PLEBIAN DESIGN, commissioned by Utah Public Art Program

Life of Tree is a kinetic sculpture that simulates a tree’s reflection in water—a metaphor for how all scientific theories are only a reflection of the underlying reality. The movement of Life of Tree embodies the universal scientific principles of resonance and frequency response—how all systems exhibit a wide range of responses across vast scales of space and time—sometimes known, sometimes hidden, and sometimes completely unexpected. Life of Tree creates a reflection of the natural world that keeps our eyes open toward the unknown. The movements were inspired by wind flow patterns, water surface movement, seismic activity, and solar cycles.

Drift Inversion by David Franklin, commissioned by Park Creek Metropolitan District, Stapleton, Denver

David Franklin’s Drift Inversion takes the Rocky Mountain landscape through an inversion, suspending it on the interior ceiling of a 128-foot pedestrian underpass in a neighborhood just east of Denver and the initial rise of the Rocky Mountains. Recollecting his youth of driving through man-made tunnels traversing the Rockies, Franklin sought to create an inviting space that would otherwise be a void of narrative in regard to the natural environment. Drift Inversion was conceived by David Franklin and co-designed by Aaron Whelton.

ConvergenceLA by Susan Narduli and Refik Anadol, commissioned by Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles and Greenland USA

ConvergenceLA employs technology as a means of visual storytelling. With over four million points of data each hour, ConvergenceLA shares the energy of place and people through real-time data and imagery. This project gleans data from a host of information systems to provide a glimpse of the city and its rhythms, sounds, and personality, all visually told on a 100-by-18-foot LED curtain.

Vessels by Nicole Kistler, commissioned by Seattle Office of Arts and Culture

Vessels is comprised of eighteen cast iron sculptures placed throughout a seven-acre edible park, Beacon Food Forest, in Seattle, WA. This project contains an eight-minute audio component, as the overall project is rooted in interviews Kistler conducted with park volunteers. In making Vessels, she realized the potential of vessels beyond holding water or food and that we, as humans, are all vessels of our own stories and experience. Transcripts of the interviews with volunteers are inscribed into the sculptures.

Surface by Ivan Toth Depeña, commissioned by Charlotte Area Transit System

Ivan Toth Depeña influenced the building at the Cornelius Park & Ride, employing a modern design to provide shelter for bus riders. Surface is inspired by one of Cornelius’ revered geographic attractions, Lake Norman, the largest man-made lake in North Carolina existing in four counties. Depeña used underwater topographic data from the 112-foot-deep basin to recreate the abstracted experience of looking up through the surface of the water, building on the emotional experience of swimming beneath the surface through use of cascading light and refracting color on the structure and below. The positioning of the angled sculptural centerpiece aligns directly with the polar coordinates (North, South, East and West) and utilizes the specifically engineered canopy size and angle to take advantage of the sun’s angles.

1.8 Beijing by Janet Echelman, installed at the Solana Light Festival, Beijing, China

The title 1.8 (One Point Eight) refers to the length of time in microseconds that the earth’s day was shortened as a result of a single physical event (the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that emanated from Japan). The artwork is constructed from fibers 15 times stronger than steel, and custom color blends that Echelman combines with light to create the dynamic final sculpture. At night, the sculpture comes to life with projected colored light. Lightweight and flexible, the sculpture has travelled to London, Mexico City, and Beijing, where it was installed for its third exhibition. The artwork invites you to pause amid the bustle and commotion, offering a chance to gaze skyward and contemplate a physical manifestation of the interconnectedness surrounding us.

Wavelength by Emily White, commissioned by Broward County Cultural Division

Wavelength, a suspended aluminum sculpture, is a site-specific artwork inspired by the way light transforms into color when it refracts through water. Wavelength represents the hues of water and light specific to Fort Lauderdale, isolated as bands in a spectrum and expressed as a suspended volume above the concourse ellipse area. Wavelength is based on the processes of painters JMW Turner and Richard Diebenkorn, each of whom made an analysis of particular behaviors of light on water specific to the locations in which they were working.

 

 The Fluid by Chris Doyle, commissioned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts & Design 

 

The Fluid is a series of animation created by artist Chris Doyle, based on the cycle of paintings The Course of Empire by Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole. The animation focuses on the rhythmic aspects of water at every scale, from phase change to the global water cycle, and the increasing anxiety over the fragility of that cycle. Presented as a constant flow, the piece drifts between figurative and abstract forms, and is deployed throughout Fulton Street Transit Center to echo the tidal motion of daily commuters passing by.

Convergence by Douwe Blumberg, commissioned by Utah Public Art Program

Commissioned for the Utah Unified State Laboratories, housing the Utah Crime Labs, Medical Examiner, and the Agriculture/Food Labs, Convergence is an assemblage of varying parts creating the realization of a shimmering reference to a figure. The artwork is in response to the facility and the work of scientists, laboratories, and employees all working toward one goal: the search for truth.

Still Spinning by Al Price, commissioned by 4Culture for the King County Solid Waste Division

Still Spinning sets an expansive concrete wall into suggested motion, as more than 400 stainless steel spoked wheels catch and reflect the ever-changing light of our Pacific Northwest weather. The wheels—all made of recycled material and arranged across the wall’s 4,200 square-foot surface—glint, sparkle, and cast shadows as drivers arrive at the station. The artist's fascination with motion, patterns, and line is at play, evoking the energy of a bicycle race and the movement of people and materials through the recycling station.

Stoneview Nature Center by Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young), commissioned by Los Angeles County Arts Commission

Stoneview Nature Center is a five-acre urban sanctuary designed with a focus on health and the environment. To inspire the values of healthy living, the artists Fallen Fruit created a series of civic artworks: Art Garden Installations, The Stoneview Neighborhood Score and Block Party, which enmesh landscape interventions, permanent installations, and a rich series of participatory events meant to engage the nearby communities. Art Garden Installations are “living sculptures” that feature different species of fruit trees and aim to invite the visitors into an environment that acknowledges the history of the site. The Stoneview Neighborhood Score is an artwork made up of interwoven personal quotes from the residents who live near the Nature Center, and Block Party is a collection of family portraits and historic images of the neighboring Blair Hill community. To complement the public tables in the Avocado and Orange Groves, the artists asked Stoneview neighbors to bring surplus flatware and utensils, which were hung from reclaimed steel armatures to form two exterior Community Wind Chimes/ Chandeliers.

SODO Track curated by Gage Hamilton, commissioned by 4Culture and King County Metro Transit

The SODO Track transformed the portal to Downtown Seattle into an imaginative raceway of art in motion. An open-air urban art gallery, it is the first mural project to commission many artists to explore one theme—motion—and for that theme to reflect the in-motion viewing experience of its viewers: over 50,000 transit riders each weekday. Regional, national, and international artists painted side-by-side, creating a series of artworks that stream through bus and train windows as a largely continuous line of sight. 40 artists have produced 29 murals on 19 properties since 2016. A story of physical transformation, the SODO Track is also a story about partnership. Produced by 4Culture, the project is coalition-built with multiple agency partners and community supporters.

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell by James Jean, commissioned by Guerrilla Development

The Fair-Haired Dumbbell building is a six-story, office-over-retail building in Portland, Oregon. All sides of the buildings, including the roof, feature original artwork by James Jean. Inspired by the architecture and its location, the mural imagines if walls of the building were formed by slicing down the sides to reveal cross sections of thundereggs (the Oregon state rock) and geodes, creating transparency and discovery of excavating slices of internal anatomy like MRI scans. In contrast to the hard, crystalline lines of the thunderegg motif, a lyrical network of flowers links the elements together. The design is meant to evoke notions of growth, adaptability, and interconnectedness.

Resonate Progression by Royden Mills, commissioned by Edmonton Arts Council

Resonant Progression consists of three sculptures placed in conceptually linked sites along a park path. The sculptural components link the viewer with the site’s history and the sounds of nature, while offering an invitation to slow down and immerse in time and nature’s tempo. Entitled Potential, Resonant Point, and Beyond Listening, each sculptural element offers a figurative and literal connection to a resonant progression. Low-tech and rugged, the sculptures marry hand-welded steel with granite boulders sourced and hand-selected by the artist from the Edmonton area. The installation is imbued with the artist’s passion and love for Edmonton, its history, and creative communities.

Books of a Feather by Dixie Friend Gay, commissioned by Houston Arts Alliance

Books of a Feather draws parallels between the physical flight of birds and the flights of imagination found in books. The free movement of birds stretches our imagination towards a world that exists beyond our vision, just as explorations in the library open our minds to new and unfamiliar views. The hand-made, high-fired ceramic tiles were stamped with book titles that include words associated with birds and flight. Titles flow like ribbon along the birds’ sides and the tiles shimmer and sparkle when caught by the light.

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Thanks for reading this monthly series showcasing the 2018 PAN Year in Review projects! The 2019 PAN Year in Review honorees will be announced at this year’s Public Art Preconference June 13-14 in the Twin Cities, MN.