Water’s Edge

This installation speaks of the right of passage between one point in time and space and another.  Promoting the value of water, The Water’s Edge was designed as a site-specific environmental sculpture for the Wet Gallery in Boston.  It is essentially a crack or split in the lower floor of the gallery, that splits the space into two parts. A narrow walkway spans the opening so that guests can pass cautiously over this gash, moving from the open area to the more enclosed space that holds the wet (water) bar. 

Installed at the base of stairs leading to the lower level, The Water’s Edge was created by constructing a raised floor, aligned with an existing level on one side and ramping down to the existing level on the other, the shoreline-like cleavage consisting of fiberglass and resin, polished stainless steel plates and filled with water spans the whole width of the gallery space. Within the water sits a glass, multi gas light spear with radiating glass tubes. Although designed to fit this sculpture, the globe is a new art form created by collaborating artist Wayne Strattman of Boston.  Exhibiting both linear and ransom electrical impulses, the four tubular glass legs pulsate light as energy courses through this glass cosmic egg during nighttime Wet Gallery events.

The intention of the sculpture is for gallery visitors to perceive a new form of energy – a birth of sorts – a cosmic sphere that has been growing within the Earth’s core, now emerges through the crust out into daylight.  Its upward thrust has caused the ground to rise and split apart, liken to a small earthquake.  The existing staircase seems to melt into this raised floor while the railings continue downward even as the treads stop.  With water bubbling constantly around the light globe, there is a feeling the sphere may take off at any moment and continue its flight out into the cosmos.  The growth sphere ideology meshes well with the concept of this new galley space that exhibits and presents the work of new emerging artists.