catherine widgery

studio work        public projects        in progress        proposals        about        contact

Artist Statement, Public Art

While I have designed and installed over 30 public art projects, it is my most recent environmental designs that I wish to talk about here to best give a sense of how I might approach future projects from an aesthetic and philosophical point of view. My work often uses light and wind to animate and transform the designed environment as the viewer moves through it.

In each of these current projects some aspect of the natural world has been brought to our attention in the form of patterns, textures or the play of wind and light. I am working to create a new vocabulary of image that marries the materials and structure of the built world with the beauty of natural elements and energy.

For the Mesa Arts Center, my work Light Storm installed in 2005 is made of tens of thousands of stainless steel discs that are set into paving indoors and out over an area of 27,000 square feet. The reflective pattern of these discs describes waves and vortices as if these points of light had rained down from the perforated metal sun screens and been blown into natural patterns by a strong desert wind. Light Storm has no mass. It exists as reflected light and surrounding color.

Created for a pedestrian corridor next to the new Bellair building in downtown Toronto, the work Light Wind proposes a series of white sails held in frames that follow the curve of a wave. These sails lift and ripple as the wind moves across them. Beneath the sails filtered light protects pedestrians from the summer sun. In winter, tiny white LED lights on metal mesh replace the sails; the lights forming their own wave patterns and ripples.

For two works at two different sites along the old Camino Real in Santa Fe, I was inspired by an ancient Native American image of two spirals that intertwine. These spirals suggest the Spanish and Native American cultures that became intertwined as a result of the trail. The work is entitled Trail of Dreams, Trail of Ghosts. One work is a dome in a city park is a light stencil of interpenetrating images from the religious beliefs of both cultures. The sun reveals the images woven together in the shadows cast on the surface below. Etched into the intertwining stone walls at the second site are images depicting the goods brought into the Indian world by the Spanish. These only become apparent as sunlight rakes across the surface. A large mosaic of stone, brass, concrete and glass depicts the voyage along the trail in a symbolic way.

For a park near the new Broncos stadium in Denver, the work Pass Through The Land was completed in 2002. I brought the rough textures and rich colors of the mountains into the urban environment. The massive boulders are set into concentric rings to suggest a labyrinth or maze, an ancient symbol of passage. Natureís forms are translated and ordered. At the entrance to this stone work are five 28 foot high towers with perforated metal silhouettes of aspen trees animated by hundreds of stainless discs hanging in the openings of the mesh. The wind creates wind chimes and a shimmering play of light. Visitors to the park pass beneath this grove and through the stone circles on their way to Invesco At Mile High Stadium.

- Catherine Widgery