COMMUNITY

Initial community input meeting had immediately put the artist in a tight spot, as different neighborhood groups each wishing to have their particular culture cerebrated through the artwork.

CRESCHE

As in ’a challenge is also an opportunity.’ Seeing the impossibility to do justice to all neighborhood groups’ wishes without resorting to tokenism, the artist looked into what might be the simplest driving force underlying the creation of cultures. It appears that the tried and true interactions between a people with its immediate environment would be maintained as customs, which would then slowly accumulate and evolve into a coherent culture in time.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SHARED

This neighborhood urban park site owes its existence to a shallow seismic fault rupture that runs diagonally across it , at only 14 feet below grade, making it a no built zone in the midst of a high housing real estate development. It is a microcosm of the global plate tectonics, where the Pacific Plate is constantly pushing up against the North American Plate. A perfect reminder of all we West Coast dwellers that a level of denial is our way of life along this subduction zone. But it is also the beautifully unifying reality that all neighborhood groups can identify with. So the artwork is a direct respond to this unique neighborhood reality, just as your ancestors and mine had responded to theirs.

RESULT

A work that shows the ground displacement in time through the alignment of its sculptural components. And a monitor down inside the rupture brings out mother earth’s on-going song in realtime. Plus a QR code for remote eavesdropping.

LIVING LENSES

LIVING LENSES