I was in Denver last week and stopped by the Tattered Cover bookstore on east Colfax Avenue. To my great surprise and delight, two books were featured on the table in front of the Art section. The first was by my favorite writer on art, John Berger, and his classic Ways of Seeing, the other was Lure of the Local by Lucy Lippard which has an art installation of mine featured in it! I can’t believe I was displayed there next to John Berger and with Lucy Lippard, two giants indeed!

Beyond Belief: Theoaesthetics of Just Old-Time Religion? has just been published by Pickwick. I have a chapter in this book which I co-authored with Dr. David O’Hara and based on a course we teach together at Augustana College entitled “Visual Culture and the Sacred: Creative Acts of Resistance and Redemption in Art, Film, and New Media.” Another chapter is by Dan Siedell, who should be read if you are interested in the intersection of liturgy, religion, and art.

The terrazzo link between the main science building and the north lecture theatres is nearly finished.

The North Lecture Theatre terrazzo is finished!

I will be exhibiting at the Visual Arts Center at the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science in Sioux Falls from December 4, 2009 through February 4, 2010. The reception is December 4th from 5:30–7:30 pm. This show pairs visual artists with poets. My work is a collaboration with poet and writer Elizabeth Oness.

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.

What follows are a series of images of the terrazzo installation process underway. The terrazzo work is being performed by Franklin Terrazzo and ANTEX Western; PCL is the General Contractor. Final completion of the work will be fall 2010.

The first step is to clear any loose concrete with shotblasting (blastracking) and mitigate any cracking in the concrete subfloor with a crack suppression system.

Then the entire floor is coated with a flexible membrane that will allow the terrazzo to float over the concrete subfloor.

The design is printed out at one-hundred percent actual size and laid across the floor.

Then the design is cut into the membrane with a cutting wheel on a grinder.

Brass and zinc divider strip are attached to the floor with tacks or hot glue.

All joints are either soldered or brazed.

Then the strip is glued to the floor with epoxy, here is a detail of the strip work.

Final adjustments are made to the divider strip before the epoxy is completely set-up.

The epoxy resin is mixed (from parts A and B).

Stone chips, recycled glass, mine byproducts, etc. are mixed into the epoxy.

The epoxy matrix is spread across the membrane with a trowel.

This is what the epoxy looks like in its rough form before grinding and polishing.

The epoxy is ground smooth with diamonds or carborundum and plastic disks progressively from 25 to 400 grit.

During the grinding stage, an epoxy grout is applied to remove any pinholes.

An entire section after a second grout coat.

Applying the sealer before the final wax coat and polish.

Here is a section after sealing.

Detail in the North Lecture Theatres. Note the different thicknesses of the divider strip and how that helps to suggest spatial relationships and depth in the floor design. Some strips will be easier to see because of their thickness, others will await discovery under the right lighting conditions and viewing angle.

And a portion of the finished North Lecture Theatre floor in the late afternoon sun.

Torso 16-color screenprint on white 100 lb. cover stock, Edition of 25, 2009. Image size 20 x 26-3/4 inches.

BUY

I will be exhibiting at the East Bank Gallery in Sioux Falls, South Dakota June 30 to August 29, 2009.

The opening reception is August 7 from 5:00 to 9:00 pm.