Over the past year David Boekelhiede '10 and myself, Christina Conant '10 have been hard at work on "Taking Flight", a large scale kinetic sculpture commissioned by Innovative Housing for their new affordable apartment complex,The Magnolia, in Northeast Portland.  

It has been quite a learning experience in getting to this point. Last spring Linda Wysong, informed and encouraged David and I to propose an idea for the building.  Together, David and I went to look at the site and went over the blueprints together.  David was drawn to the alcove of windows that rises above the entrance of the building between the elevator and the apartments.  He imagined working with taught stainless cables to suspend something at each level.  As I looked at the space I was reminded of Harry Bertoia's MIT Chapel sculpture which sits under a skylight above the alter.  I have always enjoyed how he created movement within  a linear structure and I wondered if we could utilize a similar organic patterning within this very linear space.  

We wanted also to tie our idea to the locale of Portland and to the notions of community that Innovative Housing is interested in supporting. It was fall, the Swifts had just wrapped up their seasonal dance. We thought the idea of a murmur of birds, a flock flying in formation, would be visually interesting and break up the linear nature of the building.   We gravitated toward the form of a flock taking off, the visual chaos that occurs before order is found again.  The gestalt notion that the whole is greater then the some of it's parts, that each individual element serves a purpose constructing a larger pattern, became a central and driving concept for the piece.

As we went through the proposal process and into the construction process our idea morphed slightly over time. We went from using copper, which would patina over time, to the lower maintenance material of stainless steel. We decided to take a risk and use a highly reflective no.8 finish. This polished surface would create an ever changing response of the sculpture to the light and weather it would interact with, creating a more dynamic piece.

Below are some images of our fabrication process and of the final install. Thanks so much to Lee Kelly for letting us use the studio space, and to Linda Wysong for guiding us through the process. You can see her woodblocks and prints as well as our sculpture at the Magnolia building at the intersection of NE MLK. and NE Cook St.

Building the rigging system between our trucks. 

First attempt at figuring out the tension and distance. 

Lee helps distribute the bird forms

Dave secures the final wire, the ladder acts as a perch to gain an accurate perspective. 

We used flashing to draw our pattern and secured the forms in place from the bottom up. 

The bird forms were secured using a crimp bead on either side of the form. 

INSTALL:

After installing the Uni-strut system, we began to hang the strands. 

Each strand was secured using a hook and turnbuckle. The turnbuckle allowed us to tension the cables.

View from the interior.