Public Art: Moving Site
Pamplona, 2006-2008

Prior to Public Art: Moving Site, most of my pieces had been installed in formalized architectural spaces, with established functions as places for the display of art works and sculpture.  In contrast, PAMS offered existing architectural and natural structures as elements for physical interaction and collaboration for the work.  I was also able to select a unique location for the piece at each of these sites, so that each location was as different from the other as possible.  This allowed the work to be expressive with, in and by its context. 

Pamplona (2006), Cambridge, Massachusetts

I chose interstitial spaces -- disconnected from any traditional or functional aesthetics of architecture -- because they often exist as artifacts of larger competing architectural forces.  In the collision of old and new building programs, these spaces become leftover elements subordinated to grand conceptual schemes: voids created by decay, demolition or structural necessity.  In contemporary communities, there seem to be few built environments without such spatial oddities. 

Each of these places -- the wedged courtyard of the Café Pamplona in Cambridge (which the sculpture is named for), the missing building façade replaced by Pamplona in New Haven, and in an empty lot in a quiet residential neighborhood in Bellows Falls, gave the steel cylinders a context for expression, the work having no real meaning except in relation to its supporting structure and unique location.  These places proved ideal as structural partners for such physical intervention.  The configurations of the steel cylinders were pushed in unexpected material and conceptual directions which blurred their readings as they slipped from sculpture to industrial artifact and back again. The presence of Pamplona was a visual and physical surprise and invited reassessment of overlooked locations, hopefully prompting questions such as what, where, why and who.

Pamplona (2006), Bellows Falls, New Hampshire

In each of its iterations, Pamplona was interactive.  Participants were able and sometimes required to pass through, touch and manipulate the structure.  I was able to involve local volunteers in the installation and deinstallation of the work and therefore arranging and dismantling the sculpture was also an interactive performance.  The creative process was at once visible and transparent and could be seen in terms of choreographed or theatre.  Passersby stopped, watched, asked questions -- “Why?”  “Will it be painted?”  “Was that always there?”  “What is it?”  “Is it art?”  “Is it permanent?” (and my personal favorite) “What is it for?”

Pamplona, New Haven, Connecticut

When asked “What is it for?  I am struck by the questions I ask my students: I ask them to consider what a work of art does as much as what it is, what is the function of the work in the world, and, as above, what is it for?  Public Art: Moving Site showed me, in addition to the physical and formal challenges as described above, the possibilities of public art in a social sense.  I learned how even the temporary presence of a piece of art can engage an entirely unpredictable and unexpected range of collaborations and relationships.  The encounters I experienced traveling from community to community taught me about the possibilities of art’s place and function in the world as Pamplona was transformed into a piece of the collective memory of a specific place at a specific time, over and over again. 

Pamplona (2007), Longhouse, Long Island, New York

Through Public Art: Moving Site these social interactions, these complex structures have become as tangible and compelling to me as the side of a building or the trunk of a tree; Pamplona has become part of collective memory of place, transforming (as it was transformed by) 

Pamplona (2008), Sarasota, Florida

As the sculptures are participants and performers, changing and adapting, fluid so to am I – my working methods embrace chance, through an unpredictable interaction with assistants, place, technology, institutions, the elements, time and financial constraints. The visionary concept of Public Art: Moving Site – public art that is not fixed but instead transient, dynamic and responsive – expanded my engagement and concept of site beyond the physical into the social, making site and context more integrated with the physical aspect of my work than ever before.