Research for Project #2

Research for Project #2

http://patriciajohanson.com/fairpark/ 

Patricia Johanson's "Fair Park Lagoon" located in Dallas, Texas was a project that was requested by the Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. The Director had seen Johanson's "Plant Drawings" in a New York art gallery and reasoned with her that she could produce a new design for the Fair Park Lagoon. At that time, there was no program and budget for the lagoon project so she decided to take on the task of coming up with a redesign for the lagoon. From her first trip to the lagoon, she realized that the lagoon was environmentally degraded and no animal or plant life was found. When she recorded all of what she saw at the lagoon, she came up with a design that allowed people to cut across the lagoon and a display of a variety of plants and animals. The "Fair Park Lagoon" addressed environmental degradation, pollution, and a number of other environmental issues.

https://www.djc.com/stories/images/20110325/BayerEarthworks_big.jpg

The second artwork I chose to research was Herbert Bayer's "Mill Creek Canyon Earthwork" that he constructed in 1982. The work is a combination of art, ecology, and landscape architecture that is located in the Kent, Washington. The Earthworks is composed of sculpted earth, pathways, water, and laws, which together function as a public park, storm retention facility, and landscape artwork. The project was commissioned by the City of Kent to respond to King County's 1979 groundbreaking symposium, Earthworks: Land Reclamation as Sculpture which was the project's 2.5 acres of cones, circles, lines, and berms that both manage Mill Creek's cycles of flood and drought. The project is simultaneously both intact and protected as well as greatly threatened by the greater demand for the ecological function it provides. When looking at this project, I think of Feng Shui and the elements behind that particular art form. The simple designs and spaciousness found in the project invokes harmony in art and the environment. 

Gift of Water Sculpture

(http://jackiebrookner.com/project/biosculptures/)

The "Gift of Water" sculpture was constructed in 2001 in Grossenhain, Germany. This particular biosculpture is part of a wetland pond that essentially helped provide natural filtration for a large public swimming complex that is used by over 1,500 people on a daily basis. The two moss covered hands you see in the image above reach from the wetland into the pond. The two hands are cupping the water just as a person would cup water to look at the water before the water escapes between the hands. This sculpture is a living sculpture that cleans and filters the water and provide practical ecological as well as aesthetic solutions to water quality and water quantity problems.