FEATURED ARTIST: KANA TANAKA

What impressed us about Kana Tanaka is the fragility of her installations formed out of many small glass bulbs suspended in space on threads and nets. They are completely dependant on the shifting light qualities in and their power to transform the ethereal into permanent. Born in Aichi, Japan, Tanaka studied art at the University there before continuing her education at the Rhode Island School of Design. She began as a studio artist creating a series of figure and shifted into a larger scale producing a series of progressively larger installations which use the reflections and transparencies of glass trying to surround the viewer in the sculptures which are inspired by the actual landscapes of their settings.

One of the most interesting is Thinking Globally in Human Scale for Central Connecticut State University. If you look at it from the top, you see lines of blue and white glass beads threaded on wires. From head on there is the outline of a human figure depicting the long history of man inhabiting sacred space. Another work Of Capturing a Moment hanging in the Solano County Government Center is created from a collection of glass beads which are suspended on a net to represent drops of dew on a spider's web. Cascade at Washington State University was inspired by the Spokane River; it consists of thousands of hand-formed water droplets that flow through the entire North Side of the Biomedical Sciences Building.

UPCOMING

COCKTAILS & CONVERSATIONS:

The Pairing:
Massimiliano Fuksas
Studio Fuksas

Gregg Pasquerelli AIA
SHoP Architects

Paul Goldberger
Vanity Fair

Date: Friday May 16
Time: 6:30 - 8:30 pm
Location:
Center for Architecture

MAP #5:
AROUND MANHATTAN NOW
THE ARCHITECTURAL BOAT TOUR
OF NEW YORK


We started the architectural Boat tours in partnership with MoMA when they were exhibiting Rising Currents. The show depicted design responses to the sea Level rise in the Palasades Bay which was thought to be between 3-6 feet in 50 years. That was 5 years ago and before Sandy. The world has changed substantially and the future has quickly become the present. The extent of the storm surge is shown in light blue.

The tour itself has become very popular, so much so that there are about 350+ planned for this year. We have updated the map this month for the fifth time.

FEATURED ARTIST: MICHELE OKA DONER

Michele Oka Doner takes her inspiration from the natural world. It is here that she derives her vocabulary. She grew up in Miami Beach and says that she often walked along the beach collecting shells and debris that washed up from the ocean. She has deep roots in both her city and the art world. Both her mother and grandfather were artists and her father was even the mayor in the fifties. She has also been able to design in many mediums at all scales from jewelry to furniture to sculpture to architecture lending a richness and depth to her work that makes it stronger which is unusual for an artist.

Most of her public artworks are deeply embedded in the surrounding architecture mainly in the floors. She created a series of terrazzo pieces in transportation terminals beginning with Flight at the Ronald Reagan Airport and Forces of Nature at the Port of Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. She is most famous for her piece A Walk at the Beach at the Miami-Dade International Airport which is a mile and a half long terrazzo installation that winds through the gate area including about 9000 bronze images of natural forms. It is, for sheer scale, completely spectacular. She began working on it in 1995; a second phase opened in 2010. It is also, however, not her only piece at the Airport. Sargassum is an etched glass skylight over the Intermodal Terminal building.

Michele Oka Doner also designed a series of screens including the curving Wave and Gate which is both a security checkpoint and a gateway for the Federal Courthouse in Gulfport.

FEATURED ARTIST: VICKI SCURI


We wanted to feature Vicki Scuri because she is an artist who is working in infrastructure and her work is indicative of the range of possibilities in this medium. Typically these projects are cosmetic; the artist is tasked with beautifying overpasses which is usually done with a limited pallette of lighting, relief sculptures, and landscaping in the attempt to create an artistic statement that can be read from a distance. The two main themes are 'gateway' and sometimes 'memorial'. For the artist, it requires successfully navigating a lengthy project cycle with large project teams and a lot of value engineering.

North Ninth is a series of crossed red light poles, meant to mark the entry to the city of Selina, Kansas, a city which would be barely noticeable without this gateway. Another gateway, Airway Gateway marks the entry to the El Paso International Airport on I-10 and the City which is in the throes of finishing the approval process. She has also used infrastructure to create a memorial. The Blossom Hill Pedestrian Bridge unfortunately was the result of an accident where 2 year old Alexander 'Xander' Arriaga was killed by an Amtrak train in 2005. The 'sun bridge of cherry blossoms' is supposed to be evocative of the cycles of life and death and the memory of the former cherry orchards that used to fill the Santa Clara Valley.