Related Projects

Water Projects
  • Windows on the Floating World

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

  • Terra Fugit

    • A park design that explores the changing Everglades environment to help visitors relate to a rapidly transforming landscape

  • WaterWorks at Arizona Falls

    • A permanent installation at an old hydropower station

  • A MoonTide Garden

    • A waste site transformed into a meditative rock garden that interacts with the tides of Portland, ME

  • Drawn Water

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

  • The Bronx River Golden Ball

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

  • Kenduskeag Roots

    • Four sites along the river trail using fallen trees and recorded sound

  • River Runes

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

  • Winding Down the Charles

    • A performance piece in Cambridge, MA about the length of the river and time

  • River

    • An illusionary river of water, light, and shadow

  • Communal Well

    • A participatory installation in Hawaii about drinking water

  • Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay

    • Proposal for the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon

  • Reclamation Art

    • Reclamation Artists Boston

Parks, Trails & Land
  • Windows on the Floating World

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

  • Meeting Place

    • A green community oasis in the Downtown Greenway, Greensboro, NC

  • Terra Fugit

    • A park design that explores the changing Everglades environment to help visitors relate to a rapidly transforming landscape

  • The Zanjero’s Line

    • A recreational path along 4 miles of the Highline Canal in South Phoenix, AZ

  • Topiary – A Twenty Year Project

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

  • Mud Life of the Maumee

    • Whimsical drawings of small creatures choreograph movement along paths in a Toledo, OH neighborhood park

  • Ben’s Circular Tower

    • A place for storytelling and imagination on top of Boston’s Mission Hill

  • Kenduskeag Roots

    • Four sites along the river trail using fallen trees and recorded sound

  • River Runes

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

  • Three Gardens

    • Domestic scale gardens make intimate spaces on the grounds of the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA

  • Reclamation Art

    • Reclamation Artists Boston

China

Xixi Umbrellas

  • Location: Xixi Wetland Park, Hangzhou, China
  • Client: 2012 West Lake International Invitational Sculpture Exhibition
  • Size: Seven umbrellas, 7′
  • Materials: Stainless steel, Plexiglas, prismatic film and foam
  • Photo Credits: Mao Jia & Gu Wenjia
  • Video Credits: Gu Wenjia

The project features seven umbrellas floating on the water at two sites in the Xixi Wetland Park.  The panels of the Umbrellas are made of prismatic film, which depending on the light and the viewer’s perspective, shifts between a mirrored and a transparent surface.  The Umbrellas capture the sunlight and cast rainbow light onto the surface of the water.  Six umbrellas are located at one site, with only a single umbrella at the second site.  Separated in this way, the Umbrellas become surrogates for people, with a group and an individual.

Umbrellas have suffused Chinese culture and imagery, with collapsible umbrellas described in the 2400-year-old Confucian text Rite of Zhou and an articulated umbrella shading a charioteer in the Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin’s tomb.

We arrived in Hangzhou during the rainy season, very hot and very wet.  The umbrella was our companion.  The sun came out after four days and the umbrella shaded us from the sun.  The Umbrellas are metaphors for rain, sun and the wind.  The wetland fluctuates with the weather, the water rises and falls.  The floating Umbrella can be like a lotus flower, a bird, a sail or a symbol of the Earth.  It rises and falls with the water level and moves with the wind.  Floating on the water the Umbrellas have a light impact on the wetlands.

 

back to top