Introduction to Commissions

INTRODUCTION TO COMMISSIONS

The commissions I create for private clients or public entities are perfect culminations of my experiences in art and architecture. Each project is an opportunity to pursue my ongoing interests – scientific exploration, history, anthropology – on a more ambitious scale, and for a permanent location. By incorporating a client's particular history and narrative into the work the piece resonates with their story. I get to take advantage of a singular set of conditions, consider how time and light translate for a specific site, and make something that will respond to the particular space and how it is used.

  • CRYSTAL SPHERE CHANDELIER

    Influenced by the repetition of multiple points of light generated by suspended oil lamps located in a Süleymaniye Mosque, this chandelier evokes a parallel experience on a more compressed scale. With the Crystal Sphere Chandelier, the points of light are magnified and then reverberate within its structure.

  • Crystal Sphere Chandelier, view from below

  • Crystal Sphere Chandelier pendants Crystal Sphere Chandelier, end view

  • LOS FELIZ CHANDELIER

    For an early twentieth-century Spanish-style house in Los Angeles, I wanted to create a piece that evoked the memory of that time without being a replication of it. I looked at a range of influences from Art Deco to the Viennese Secession, and pared it all down to a minimalist chandelier with heavy, hand-cut crystal pendants, at once reminiscent of Paris in the 1920s and scotch tumblers in a Prohibition-era speakeasy.

  • Los Feliz Chandelier, Form study

  • Los Feliz Chandelier detail

  • CONSTELLATION CHANDELIER

    Suspended within the nearly four-story void of a spiral staircase, thirty-seven pendants form a cascade of light, floating in a residence like a personal constellation. It is an unexpected moment and grand, yet because the lighting is so elemental, reflective, and subtle, it is still a private experience. By day the installation takes on a sculptural quality, as the viewer circulates it while performing the ritual of ascending and descending the stairs. As darkness envelops the piece, it transitions to something celestial, and one ends the day by walking up into the stars.

  • Site of Installation

  • Constellation Chandelier Inspiration

  • Constellation Chandelier, view from below

  • GLASS SLIDE CHANDELIER

    This piece is a pure expression of my interest in creating new forms from found objects. I have been collecting antique glass slides for more than twenty years. With their ephemeral, ghostlike scenes, they tell a visual history of a collective past. The bronze structure of the chandelier, like a photographic lightbox, frames scenes of cities, farms, buildings and landscapes from the first half of the twentieth century.

  • Glass Slide Chandelier study Inspiration

  • Glass slides detail

  • Glass Slide Chandelier

  • Glass Slide Chandelier

  • ASTROLABE

    The astrolabe was a sixteenth-century handheld device used to chart the stars along nautical pathways. Here it is reinterpreted eight feet in diameter, with bronze concentric rings descending in scale, and suspended under a domed skylight in a twenty-five-foot-high observatory-like space. Hand-etched on flat glass at the heart of the sculpture is a drawing of an astrological map with notes on the planning of the commission. Illuminated at night, the piece casts an intricate shadow that looks like the blueprint drawing for its fabrication.

  • Inspiration, 16th century astrolabe

  • Form study

  • Form study

  • Plan view

  • Astrolabe Site condition

  • Astrolabe

  • Detail

  • Astrolabe, Night

  • RAIN CHANDELIER

    The intricate truss system and crossbeam construction of a Balinese temple was the influence for the Rain Chandelier, which approximates that architectural style with an open steel framework. A tropical climate of intermittent rain is translated in glass pendants, which appear like raindrops falling through the canopy. The piece acts as a room within a room, enveloping all who sit beneath it in a cloud of shimmering and reflective crystal drops above.

  • Inspiration for Rain Chandelier

  • Inspiration, Balinese Temple

  • Model detail, Optical study Beam Study

  • Elevation Views

  • Rain Chandelier Structural model

  • Rain Chandelier, Pendant hardware

  • Rain Chandelier, Details

  • Rain Chandelier, Details

  • Rain Chandelier, view from below

  • CAMERA OBSCURA

    Based on the Camera Obscura, an early optical device, this six-foot-wide sculpture has various lenses that capture projected moments happening in the landscape beyond – a tree, a passing car, a bird in flight – and shows them in simultaneity as fragments of inverted images. Standing before it, you experience an odd sensation, much like watching a stop-motion film of disjointed scenes played out on multiple screens in real time.

  • Sketch, Graphite on Mylar

  • Three-Dimensional Study

  • Three-Dimensional Study