Scott Parsons » Public Art

CCIS

admin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:34:48 +0000

CCIS This is my most current project, a terrazzo floor installation nearly 40,000 sq. ft. in size for the University of Alberta’s Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (CCIS). This new, state-of-the-art facility brings together students, professors and researchers from multiple fields of Science: Integrated Earth and Landscape Management, Nanostructures and New Materials, Resource Geosciences, Chemical Biology and Proteomics, Planetary Dynamics, and Physics.

This is a visualization of the main hallway. Like education itself, this floor offers a sense of journey and discovery. My design concept began as a response to the geometry of the planned built environment and the geometry of the research environment, with an emphasis on the open floor plate design and multiple points of view expressed in the architecture, multiple entries and passageways, and the plan view siting along the campus North Quad.

The gesture of connecting interior to exterior spaces is critical to the design: One could look out the North Theatre windows to the nearby North Saskatchewan River and recognize the link to fluid dynamics and see the river’s flow echoed visually in the floor; or connect the formation of ice crystals on the window outside as a diffusion limited aggregation in the form of a fractal in the floor. Or in another section, one can make the connection between the pattern in the floor and the symmetry witnessed in the seasonal migration of a flock of birds outside. When this happens, the world and its simple gestures become a much more meaningful and rich environment to discover in this moment of recognition.

“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest…a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ~ Albert Einstein

See installation photographs under my Blog.

Turtle Island

admin — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:55:46 +0000

Turtle Island Monument

As part of a larger effort undertaken by the City of Berkeley, California to renovate the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in downtown Berkeley, this project is designed to honor and recognize Native American history commemorating the end of 500 years of resistance and the beginning of 500 years of rebuilding. The Turtle Island Monument is an unprecedented, multi-visionary approach to the making of a public art monument. The Monument consists of four turtles placed on the true north, south, east and west axis, mounted in the lower pool of an existing historical fountain, and eight medallions incorporated into the surrounding plaza surface. Eight contemporary Native American artists each designed a 3-ft. diameter stone medallion to commemorate his or her own people. The four large Loggerhead turtles I sculpted weigh nearly 200 pounds each and are 46 inches in length. Actual installation of the project is forthcoming and will take place when the City of Berkeley renovates the entire Park. Currently the turtles are on display and available for viewing in Berkeley City Hall.

Prairie Spiral

admin — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 00:29:48 +0000

Click on the above image and you will see a navigable 360 degree image file. This works on all Macs, and on Windows with QuickTime or DevalVR (480 KB) installed.

Click and drag with your mouse to rotate your viewpoint. Hold shift on your keyboard to zoom in. Hold Control (Ctrl) on your keyboard to zoom out.

Prairie Spiral

Prairie Spiral is a 400 sq. ft., twelve-color, 1600-piece ceramic porcelain tile public art floor for the Center for Visual Arts at Augustana College in Sioux Falls. The atrium design is based on the spiraling seed patterns found in prairie flowers and pine cone petals in the South Dakota landscape. These spirals correspond to the fibonacci sequence used by artists, musicians, theologians, mathematicians, architects, and scientists for centuries, and are intended to celebrate the significance of creative scholarly studies and their contribution to a liberal arts campus curriculum.

Algorithmic Tapestry

admin — Sat, 24 Aug 2002 16:24:31 +0000

Algorithmic Tapestry

Algorithmic Tapestry is a 10,864 sq. ft. seven-color 3/8-inch epoxy terrazzo public art floor for the Engineering Centers Building at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The design is based on geometric algorithms commonly used by engineers, with depictions of quasicrystals, nanocrystals, and a series of digital and analog references to computing technology and numeric systems from 20,000 years ago to the present. Reviewed by Art in America as the Best in Public Art from 2002. Reviewed in Architectural Record. Winner of the National Honor Award Floor of the Year by the National Terrazzo and Mosaic Association. Winner of the Golden Trowel Award by the International Masonry Institute.

Cable Center Museum

admin — Fri, 26 Jul 2002 04:08:25 +0000

Cable Center Museum

This project consists of five digital murals designed for the National Cable Television Center and Museum Main Exhibit Hall located on the University of Denver campus in Denver, Colorado. The largest mural measures 50 x 12 ft. This project is a collaboration with David Griggs, artist. The Cable Center is the nonprofit educational arm of the cable industry. Three murals wrap around the exterior of three circular theaters and two murals demarcate the entrance and exit of the exhibition area. The three interior murals highlight cable’s relationship to society, higher education, and as an information source. Architects: RNL Design.

Wingscape

admin — Thu, 23 May 2002 23:56:23 +0000

Wingscape

This project is a journey of scientific discovery into the extraordinary patterning found all around us. Wingscape consists of two ceramic tile murals (over 16,000 pieces), a 20 ft. tall sandstone column, 275 linear feet of sandblasted limestone slab, and an 11 ft. geologic cairn monolith created for Hurst Hall at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado (collaboration with David Griggs). Each artistic element is based on algorithmic and fractal patterning in nature and represents a variety of ways to describe natural pattern formation, from mathematical models to molecular processes to physical characteristics that represent the various scientific disciplines within the building. The culmination of this installation is revealed in two ceramic tile murals in the entrance atrium. The Gunnison area is host to two species of butterflies which are currently endangered: the Nokomis and Uncompahgre Fritillaries. These butterflies survive in a few remaining glacial tundra environments and have a lifespan of about two weeks. Using hand-made glazed ceramic tile in several different proportionate sizes, the murals portray a pixilated effect of their wings which corresponds to levels of scale and magnification. The process of diffusion triggers the patterning seen in the butterfly wings in the murals.

Solstice Window

admin — Sun, 09 Jul 2000 22:48:46 +0000

The Solstice Window Project

Inspired by Ancient Puebloan architecture, the Solstice Window at the Center of Southwest Studies is a 450-pound block of pre-cast concrete with an opening in the shape of a spiral aligned to the summer solstice. At sunrise on the summer solstice, sunlight enters the Solstice Window and collimates a shaft of light across the Museum’s Great Hall projecting the form of a spiral onto the opposite wall. Each summer, the Center of Southwest Studies, located on the campus of Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, opens before sunrise on the day of the solstice (around 5:45 am). The public is invited to come be a part of this annual celebration. More info at The Center of Southwest Studies. Video by Christina Knickerbocker.

Biomatrices

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:29:35 +0000

Click on the above image and you will see a navigable 360 degree image file. This works on all Macs, and on Windows with QuickTime or DevalVR (480 KB) installed.

Click and drag with your mouse to rotate your viewpoint. Hold shift on your keyboard to zoom in. Hold Control (Ctrl) on your keyboard to zoom out.

Biomatices

Biomatrices are two 226 sq. ft. marble, granite, sandstone, and stainless steel public art floors located in the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment’s Laboratory and Radiation Services facility in Denver, Colorado. The two designs pair trefoil symbols of biotechnology with Arapaho iconography at the major pedestrian intersections within the facility, forming a visual matrix (ideogram) designating the air, water, and human environments upon which all activities of this facility flow.

Star Calendar

admin — Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:26:11 +0000

Ha-no-oo: Star Calendar

An outdoor 500 sq. ft., 1500-piece granite mosaic station sidewalk at the busiest RTD light rail station in downtown Denver, Colorado (16th Street and California). The Ha-no-oo: Star Calendar is an unprecedented ten-thousand year journey across the night skies of Colorado recorded in the constellations of twenty-three indigenous nations of this region. Light rail commuters can look down at the platform and up into the sky and recognize a metaphor for navigation and guidance by the stars. All the star names resulted from first-hand research and direct conversations with over fifty elders. “When language touches the earth,” writes N. Scott Momaday, “there is the holy, there is the sacred.” Twenty-one languages are present. Reviewed in Art Papers, Leonardo, and Public Art Review.

Quincentenary Project

admin — Tue, 10 Nov 1992 20:33:18 +0000

The Quincentenary Project

One hundred charred tipi skeletal frames and over thirty historic markers placed alongside the City and County Building and State Capitol in Civic Center Park in downtown Denver, Colorado, from October 10-12, 1992. The Quincentenary Project was a collaboration with Dave Greenlund, the American Indian Movement of Colorado, and the Fourth World Center for the Study of Indigenous Law and Politics at the University of Colorado at Denver. The Quincentenary Project was reviewed by CNN, USA Today, AP, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, High Performance, Public Art Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Z Magazine. Video by Lori Windle.

“I can’t tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. I know too that the powerful fear art, whatever its form, when it does this, and that amongst the people such art sometimes runs like a rumour and a legend because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannote, a sense that unites us, for it is inseparable from a justice at last. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honour.”
–John Berger