This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
103


Top left and bottom right Ballroom Luminoso in the Theo & Malone Underpass at IH 35, San Antonio, Texas. The fixtures were made from old bicycle parts. Top right Fish Bellies at the Texas State University, San Marcos. Bottom left ‘Wondrous’ commissioned by the Tucson Pima Arts Council.


the internal LED lighting. Fish Bellies has become a new student landmark on cam- pus, prompting students to clamber on. Fish Bellies like many of O’Connell and Han- cock’s projects is called upon for night-time and daytime use. “It’s pretty easy to do one or the other,” says O’Connell, “but it’s much more difficult to make a compelling art piece that works both day and night.” One of the major themes in the American discourse at the moment is the attempt to make cities more liveable, especially in downtown areas which are often business districts and lack any kind of atmosphere in the evenings. More pertinently in the South- ern US, where the temperatures are so hot, the adoption of an ethos seen in Spain and Mexico is becoming much more common, people are active outdoors in the evenings and are indoors in the day. “So we have opportunities,” says O’Connell, “to make art that is interesting day and evening, that’s one of the reasons that we have been using LED.”


Interactivity is a crucial part of the duo’s work too and they have recently created a number of flat watercolour walls, for use in children’s hospitals, enabling people to create colour compositions by touch,


allowing patients to reach out and change something, leaving a pattern behind them, before they go into the examination room. “We get people asking if there is anything more, greater levels of interactivity that we can add, and we say no, because in a chil- dren’s hospital just doing something simple that all ages can take part in and people can do together is crucial. The artwork gives the patient control, because usually in hospital it’s the opposite.”


“In the public realm,” says O’Connell, “we always struggle to find interactivity that is meaningful and interesting and works in a world where there is already so much inter- activity through screens and buttons. One of the pieces we did ‘Wondrous’ involved LEDs projecting intense colour through hundreds of words drawn from Marana Library’s collection.”


The words were arranged using a computer algorithm that by its placement of nouns, verbs and modifiers leads to the creation of sentences that, for example, start in the book of Genesis and then goes into a Harry Potter novel before ending with something from Dr Spock’s Advice for Child Raising. The projections of the words physically recreate the notion of being awash with


culture.


The reaction to their work has been over- whelmingly positive and Ballroom Luminoso has recently been nominated for an award at South by South West, a cultural festival in Austin, Texas. The award celebrates ‘placement’ which is a concept popular in America at the moment and involves the use of art to create a sense of place. People will say ‘let’s meet by the underpass with the lights,’ in the case of Ballroom Lumi- noso, an empty space has become a place, when it used to be just a black spot on a map. Tucson, Arizona, is the oldest continuously inhabited place in America, with roots in American Indian and Mexican traditions. It is the sixth poorest city in the US, but has the eighth largest research university. Yet even an interesting culture and history can- not always cover the vastness of the space the city sits in, empty spaces abound and emptiness doesn’t always inspire, unless in the case of O’Connell and Hancock it inspires you to create something new. The pair are doing their best to make Tucson a more colourful city, brimming with art. www.jbpublicart.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150