[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
we all have easy access to something
that will allow us to see the world in
new ways and make our lives more
meaningful our childhood memories I’ve
discovered that I can use memories to
create art and that you can use it as a
door to understanding art as an artist
I’ve learned that memories can lead to
profound art and profound art can it
make architecture more meaningful I’m an
architect sculptor exploring the
creative uses of memory memory is like a
sixth sense that we use to understand
places and for places to be meaningful
we have to rely on it to interpret and
make sense of them so how can we create
a good sense of place with art how will
we know it starts with our memories I
recently used my own childhood
reflections to create a large public
work of art as an Air Force brat growing
up on the eastern edge of Nebraska we
always camped and drove West on our
summer vacations we lived modestly but
we had this awesome 63 Plymouth station
wagon with fins optional seatbelts and
air conditioning that my father was
always reluctant to use my overriding
experience of Nebraskan points West was
his boring flatness miles and miles of
straight highways and nothing but corn
and cattle as far as the eye could see
it was always hot and thunderstorms
became the highlight of the week to beat
the heat now the cool thing about a flat
state like Nebraska is that you can
really see the weather coming
thunderheads
big tall beautiful puffy cumulonimbus
clouds the perfect opportunity for fun
in the mind of my 9 year old brain and
when it rained we got soaked
the only challenge was drying out in
time to show up for dinner
it was marvel
this experience for brain for me is
primal I would call the stinging rain on
my face and arms
the visibility goes from miles to feet
the sound gets louder and louder
the air temperature drops and my body
cools down my t-shirt and jeans get
soaked and heavy I can smell the rain
and taste the salt off my sweaty face
and like every kid I stretch out my arms
and turn my face to the sky and try to
guzzle it all in I repeated this as
often as I could get away with it my
childhood remembrance became the genesis
for the creation of fractal rain and the
key to turning a big space into a
memorable place tapping into early
childhood memories is also your door to
seeing an understanding art you know
that as a young child you first
responded to people places things events
emotionally instead of rationally you
relied on your emotional intelligence
until we’re taught to draw within the
lines scribbling everywhere makes
perfect sense to us there’s no fear
there’s no judgment the key to
understanding art is this rather than
trying to rationalize and judge it begin
by looking inward and pay attention to
your feelings in order to rewire these
feelings you just have to reach back in
the earliest times of your life and try
to remember when you first felt this
particular way now gentlemen feelings
may not be part of your guy card but
trust me this works to create fractal
rain it would be perfectly ramage
rational to mimic rain by trying to make
it look exactly like rain
however by responding to my memory of
rain it granted me tremendous freedom
this is very important by responding
directly to my childhood image and
feelings of rain it freed me to be
abstract and open to multiple
interpretations
you and I now have permission to recall
our feelings and see in the art whatever
we will recently I was commissioned by
the new library in partnership with a
Dayton Art Institute to create a
sculpture inspired by Monet’s water
lilies the chimú mummy mask nan Jun
Pakes television sculpture and Dayton’s
River history the 1913 flood changed
everything about Dayton since then rain
and its effect has become part of our
cultural DNA throughout the process of
creating fractal rain my childhood
memories became the touchstone for my
artistic decisions as I didn’t consider
these works of art and the flood this
two-year project would bring a lot of
technical challenges requiring research
and experimentation I thought I knew
exactly what to do I’ve made smaller
rain sculptures before and all I needed
to do was to scale it up wrong the
difficulties grew exponentially with the
size of the project eventually I ended
up with custom fabrication of five miles
of high-strength stainless steel wire
3756 acrylic prisms bending and
electropolishing to steel and designing
the means to hang 1,000 pounds 60 feet
in the air across a span of 120 feet
there were a lot of failures but with
each failure came a discovery
I thought glass would be the perfect
material for raindrops but it look too
soft and it was too heavy as it turned
out it was actually acrylic prisms that
closely matched my memory of the sting
of rain on my face and arms the
stainless steel had a lackluster
dullness but electropolishing the wires
gave it a gleaming shine that reminded
me of streaking wind driven rain my
childhood experience of being drenched
suggested that frackle rain had to be
big enough for people to feel like they
are immersed in it walking in the front
door of the library you may be
apprehensive thousands of wires border
and chaos as they slope at slight angles
an overlap is of being driven by the
wind it’s too big to see all at once
you’d have to traverse it by walking up
the grand staircase and around all three
floors during the daytime the sculptures
and constant dialogue with the sky the
clouds and the Sun refracting the light
and colors of the day and by night the
whole composition gathers the ambient
light of this space and reverses itself
against the night sky by moving your
body while viewing the experience
becomes visceral the body has a memory
to the experience of fractal rain can
trigger your own memory of rain what
does this remind you of what are your
feelings imagine the possibility of
experiencing art like this all the time
when you sparked a memory you can use
all your senses to experience art fully
especially sculpture you have to engage
your body and your mind adults may be
cautious about experiencing art like
this but kids come by it naturally and
we can learn from them one of the best
stories I can share is that of a
nine-year-old boy at the grand opening
of the library from an upper floor he
points to fractal rain and says to his
grandparents it’s a dinosaur
they were amused and thought I’d be
disappointed no I’m thrilled he gets it
kids are particularly good at this
interpretation game it’s called creative
miss reading and bears no relation to
what we might call the truth all that
matters is that we connect with our own
personal memories you can begin to do
this too when you see art as a matter of
fact you can now begin to see anything
as art not just what the experts call
art but anything maybe it’s the dress
you’re making or the holiday dinner
you’re going to prepare life becomes art
when we open ourselves up to childhood
memories the path to understanding is
through your feelings and the door to
feelings is through memory with this
simple knowledge you are now a
self-appointed art expert authorized to
explore your own art expressions this is
how you let art make your life more
meaningful
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
we all have easy access to something
that will allow us to see the world in
new ways and make our lives more
meaningful our childhood memories I’ve
discovered that I can use memories to
create art and that you can use it as a
door to understanding art as an artist
I’ve learned that memories can lead to
profound art and profound art can it
make architecture more meaningful I’m an
architect sculptor exploring the
creative uses of memory memory is like a
sixth sense that we use to understand
places and for places to be meaningful
we have to rely on it to interpret and
make sense of them so how can we create
a good sense of place with art how will
we know it starts with our memories I
recently used my own childhood
reflections to create a large public
work of art as an Air Force brat growing
up on the eastern edge of Nebraska we
always camped and drove West on our
summer vacations we lived modestly but
we had this awesome 63 Plymouth station
wagon with fins optional seatbelts and
air conditioning that my father was
always reluctant to use my overriding
experience of Nebraskan points West was
his boring flatness miles and miles of
straight highways and nothing but corn
and cattle as far as the eye could see
it was always hot and thunderstorms
became the highlight of the week to beat
the heat now the cool thing about a flat
state like Nebraska is that you can
really see the weather coming
thunderheads
big tall beautiful puffy cumulonimbus
clouds the perfect opportunity for fun
in the mind of my 9 year old brain and
when it rained we got soaked
the only challenge was drying out in
time to show up for dinner
it was marvel
this experience for brain for me is
primal I would call the stinging rain on
my face and arms
the visibility goes from miles to feet
the sound gets louder and louder
the air temperature drops and my body
cools down my t-shirt and jeans get
soaked and heavy I can smell the rain
and taste the salt off my sweaty face
and like every kid I stretch out my arms
and turn my face to the sky and try to
guzzle it all in I repeated this as
often as I could get away with it my
childhood remembrance became the genesis
for the creation of fractal rain and the
key to turning a big space into a
memorable place tapping into early
childhood memories is also your door to
seeing an understanding art you know
that as a young child you first
responded to people places things events
emotionally instead of rationally you
relied on your emotional intelligence
until we’re taught to draw within the
lines scribbling everywhere makes
perfect sense to us there’s no fear
there’s no judgment the key to
understanding art is this rather than
trying to rationalize and judge it begin
by looking inward and pay attention to
your feelings in order to rewire these
feelings you just have to reach back in
the earliest times of your life and try
to remember when you first felt this
particular way now gentlemen feelings
may not be part of your guy card but
trust me this works to create fractal
rain it would be perfectly ramage
rational to mimic rain by trying to make
it look exactly like rain
however by responding to my memory of
rain it granted me tremendous freedom
this is very important by responding
directly to my childhood image and
feelings of rain it freed me to be
abstract and open to multiple
interpretations
you and I now have permission to recall
our feelings and see in the art whatever
we will recently I was commissioned by
the new library in partnership with a
Dayton Art Institute to create a
sculpture inspired by Monet’s water
lilies the chimú mummy mask nan Jun
Pakes television sculpture and Dayton’s
River history the 1913 flood changed
everything about Dayton since then rain
and its effect has become part of our
cultural DNA throughout the process of
creating fractal rain my childhood
memories became the touchstone for my
artistic decisions as I didn’t consider
these works of art and the flood this
two-year project would bring a lot of
technical challenges requiring research
and experimentation I thought I knew
exactly what to do I’ve made smaller
rain sculptures before and all I needed
to do was to scale it up wrong the
difficulties grew exponentially with the
size of the project eventually I ended
up with custom fabrication of five miles
of high-strength stainless steel wire
3756 acrylic prisms bending and
electropolishing to steel and designing
the means to hang 1,000 pounds 60 feet
in the air across a span of 120 feet
there were a lot of failures but with
each failure came a discovery
I thought glass would be the perfect
material for raindrops but it look too
soft and it was too heavy as it turned
out it was actually acrylic prisms that
closely matched my memory of the sting
of rain on my face and arms the
stainless steel had a lackluster
dullness but electropolishing the wires
gave it a gleaming shine that reminded
me of streaking wind driven rain my
childhood experience of being drenched
suggested that frackle rain had to be
big enough for people to feel like they
are immersed in it walking in the front
door of the library you may be
apprehensive thousands of wires border
and chaos as they slope at slight angles
an overlap is of being driven by the
wind it’s too big to see all at once
you’d have to traverse it by walking up
the grand staircase and around all three
floors during the daytime the sculptures
and constant dialogue with the sky the
clouds and the Sun refracting the light
and colors of the day and by night the
whole composition gathers the ambient
light of this space and reverses itself
against the night sky by moving your
body while viewing the experience
becomes visceral the body has a memory
to the experience of fractal rain can
trigger your own memory of rain what
does this remind you of what are your
feelings imagine the possibility of
experiencing art like this all the time
when you sparked a memory you can use
all your senses to experience art fully
especially sculpture you have to engage
your body and your mind adults may be
cautious about experiencing art like
this but kids come by it naturally and
we can learn from them one of the best
stories I can share is that of a
nine-year-old boy at the grand opening
of the library from an upper floor he
points to fractal rain and says to his
grandparents it’s a dinosaur
they were amused and thought I’d be
disappointed no I’m thrilled he gets it
kids are particularly good at this
interpretation game it’s called creative
miss reading and bears no relation to
what we might call the truth all that
matters is that we connect with our own
personal memories you can begin to do
this too when you see art as a matter of
fact you can now begin to see anything
as art not just what the experts call
art but anything maybe it’s the dress
you’re making or the holiday dinner
you’re going to prepare life becomes art
when we open ourselves up to childhood
memories the path to understanding is
through your feelings and the door to
feelings is through memory with this
simple knowledge you are now a
self-appointed art expert authorized to
explore your own art expressions this is
how you let art make your life more
meaningful
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you
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