Related Projects

Working with Buildings
  • Man from City Hall

    • Boston City Hall becomes a giant character for First Night celebrations

  • LightPlay

    • A project using refracted light and other day/night lighting effects for a new mixed-use building

  • Terpsichore for Kansas City

    • Turning a 1000 car parking garage into a musical instrument in Kansas City, MO

  • The Benefit of Mr. Kite

    • Re-envisioning a walkway in San Diego, CA into a choreographed path of light and color

  • Glove Cycle

    • Gloves go through a life cycle while leading passengers down into a Cambridge subway station

  • Pillars of Thought

    • Transforming architectural elements into guardians of thought in the Scottsdale Public Library

  • Drawn Water

    • A permanent piece at the Cambridge, MA Water Treatment Plant about where water comes from and where it goes

  • 300 Summer Street

    • An artist-owned live/work studio building in Boston’s Fort Point area with recycled steel plate sculpture for the public spaces

  • City at the Falls

    • A terrazzo floor and lighted ceiling brings the river and the city into the Louisville Convention Center

Schools & Libraries
  • Passage

    • A multifaceted project for the new South Mountain Community Library, connecting people through words to the landscape of South Phoenix

  • Portrait Chairs

    • Seats of honor for readers in Norfolk, MA

  • In the Dense Words

    • A book environment for a book distribution company

  • Pillars of Thought

    • Transforming architectural elements into guardians of thought in the Scottsdale Public Library

  • Gateway

    • An oversized table creates a fanciful gateway in a Cambridge middle school

  • The Bay Circuit Trail

    • A community project traversing the “Emerald Necklace” surrounding Boston

  • Light Gate

    • Glass laminated with prismatic film captures the sunset for the Centennial Art Project for Manhattan Beach, CA

  • Connections

    • A seating project connecting with the Stanley Tool Company and Central Connecticut State University

New York
  • Topiary – A Twenty Year Project

    • A sculptural gateway to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Zoo that measures time with growing boxwood

  • The Bronx River Golden Ball

    • An annual event in the Bronx and Westchester Co., NY, where the ball focuses diverse communities on the river

  • River Runes

    • A trail of installations focused on the river at Art Park

  • Playback

    • Reclaiming a derelict tennis court with sound and nylon straps

Terullian Mantle

  • Location: PS89 Elementary School, Queens, NY (1995)
  • Client: N.Y. Board of Education
  • Size: 40′ x 20′ x 9′
  • Architect: Tabler Associates, New York, NY
  • Budget: $155,000
  • Photo Credits: Beckett Logan

Model of the Terullian Mantle in relation to the entrance of the school

Terullian Mantle was inspired by the annual International Day festivities held in this Queens neighborhood to celebrate PS89’s ethnic diversity.  Of 1,300 K-5 students, only 110 speak English as a first language.  The central element of this multi-part installation is The Terullian Mantle, a garment made out of flags of the world sewn together in a traditional American quilt pattern to create a unified image.  Each year the Mantle is ceremonially worn by the school’s principal for the International Day Parade.

For the rest of the year the Mantle is displayed in a case at the school’s main entrance.  The case and the surrounding installation elements have transformed the space to create an environment based on images of the Earth and internationalism.  The standard Fritz  floor-tile that is used throughout the school has been cut into flag patterns.

Detail of the turtle

The Mantle is in the center of the case with the cloth that it was cut from on either side.  The black of the floor is continued into the columns and into the ceiling around the case.  The red of the case is extended into the geometry of the floor.  Lighting ties the piece together into a dramatic entry space.

The background of the case consists of topographical reliefs of the Earth’s surface: on the left is a map of the Earth in 1995; on the right a map of the Earth as Pangaea 250 million years ago; and in the center is the image of  turtle, which is covered by the mantle for most of the year.

Featured in many  different stories about the creation of world, the turtle conceptually links together the distant past of Pangea and the modern world.  For this project, turtle myths and stories were collected from different cultures and are now part of the school’s curriculum.

back to top