The Water, Ecology, Community piece–that was great. It’s like a mini public art project, but it’s private; it’s in an office.  The process, though, even though the audience isn’t truly public, was kind of similar.

The way I went about it is I asked for engagement and I used that to generate the concept. I asked them–the office, I think it was just the principals–to select photos from their records that best reflected water, ecology, and community, which is kind of their tagline. So they did, and then the piece was generated from that.

It evolved from the pictures. It evolved really from their tagline–what does that really mean? How does that play into what they do? Are they related? And then I thought, they’re not really distinct–one goes into the other–and that started generating the piece. It’s a reflection, literally and figuratively, on water, ecology, and community, and playing those off each other.

It’s kind of exciting to do a project on that scale though. It’s different. It’s not a teeny little piece; it’s also not some huge thing with a crane. But it’s also not a piece I just make on my own in my studio and then that’s it. So it’s in between, and I would be excited to do more pieces like that. It’s kind of taking this public art approach but using it on a smaller scale, in a particular, private kind of sense.

I’m doing something like that right now. I’m taking piano lessons from this great guy and we’re trading and he wants a piece of art. And really it’s kind of a similar process as Water, Ecology, Community. I’ve talked with him a lot about his travels–he goes to Russia a lot. And obviously he plays the piano; he’s played all his life, and so how could that generate a piece? So I’m thinking about the strings, and I have a framework that I’m going to make that will go right above his piano.  There’s a frame holding strings in tension–which is the piano–and then above it that’ll be duplicated, not literally, but there will be another piece with tension. And then the colors, and if there’s any imagery like Water, Ecology, Community, that’s kind of what I’m investigating now–thinking about what are his favorite pieces or composers, or what are the colors he experiences in the small town in Siberia that he goes to a lot–can that somehow enter into this piece?

private commission, St Paul, water ecology community