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that make each site unique. They investigate local conditions such as natural systems, social history, unique material culture, adjacent communities and the surrounding architecture and landscape. Through these investigations, they work toward a formal vocabulary for each artwork. In previous pieces, they have drawn inspiration from the Chinook arch weather phenomenon that covers the City of Calgary for the nearby Carnegie Library for Toby, and the Fish Bellies. Each sculpture directly responds to the site, but also creates a powerful new landmark.
‘The public doesn’t view the artwork, they inhabit it.’
interpretation must remain or it isn’t effective strings that behave the same way every time, and expression,” says Joe. To put it simply, the public doesn’t view Joe and Blessing’s artwork, encounter.
as “meaningful interactivity.” At the technical level, their art often contains some form of touch- sensitive circuitry, optical projection, custom- elements. “A lot of work goes on behind the scenes to make the electronic guts of our sculptures extremely reliable, modular, replaceable and understandable by people who may maintain engineers and fabricators who we work with draw techniques from undersea instrumentation, space exploration, and mobile computing to develop their technologies,” describes Joe.
On a social level, interactivity allows the public to ways. Pieces like Seedpods and the soon-to- be-installed Wandering Stars respond directly and instantaneously to viewer input with the potential to look very different after every chance encounter. “The trick is to make the interactivity instantly without needing a decoder ring. Although we strive for complete straightforwardness and clarity, some mystery and multiple levels of
The connective thread that runs through all their work is light. They believe in light’s power to elicit a strong emotional response from viewers, but pieces have two aesthetics lives: one during the day and another at night. During the day, acrylic pieces like Fish Bellies exist as ethereal translucent forms and then become kaleidoscopic glowing objects at night. Likewise their steel pieces like Ballroom Luminoso or Brilliance use projecting LEDs to transform the surrounding space into an illuminated landscape.
The desire to build with light, literally, is the impetus behind their latest artistic endeavor: the development of a new method of 3D printing large- scale translucent structures in long-lasting acrylic. They hope to be able to create complex 3D forms so on a scale that ranges from human-sized to small buildings.
In the next few months, Joe and Blessing will be installing some of their most ambitious pieces like Heart Beacon, a sculpture for the Emergency Coordination Center in Portland, Oregon, and However, they have quite a few projects in the pipeline.
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