The Orlando Apartments, West Hollywood, CA – Exterior view with Interior inset
2018
Dichroic glass, Mangeris, aluminum
20” H x 20’ L x 2” D

This is a permanently installed art commission, an extension of my box series. The completed piece consists of two segmented rectangular wooden boxes lined up in a series as one within the architecture. The boxes are crafted with rabbet joints at each corner accented by aluminum pins, which secure the joints in place.

The construction, materials, and design of the piece blends seamlessly into the building’s Mid Century Modern architecture. The piece is mounted on the west, facing the street, above the entrance to the building, capturing the California sunlight, filling interior and exterior spaces with rays of color, engaging residents, and the neighborhood. The idea of the box, with its history, provides a framework and perspective.

I worked with Metros Capital, a private development/investment firm, in providing an art piece that not only enhances the day-to-day experience for residents of The Orlando but also adds radiant rays of color to the trees and street throughout the day in this pedestrian West Hollywood neighborhood.

This project was a part of a major revitalization of The Orlando, a mid-century multi-unit residence building located in West Hollywood, CA. Through past and current renovations, its modern lines are readily apparent. The center atrium, open to the blue LA skies, the framed opening, reminiscent of James Turrell’s spacious, meditative art.

This building was built in Los Angeles at a time of the explosion of the Los Angeles art scene – just at the time when Pop Art was arriving with the bright colors of a new American culture on the move towards minimalism. During the recent renovations the main common area design features were refreshed and alive with new wood and fresh paint. The interior space, definitively modernist, is clean with attractive sleek wood-paneled dividers and trim. In a city of vivid color, the stark white interior and open spaces provided blank surfaces for color.

My installation consists of multiple dichroic glass panels to filter the natural sunlight, mounted in a minimal frame to be installed in the upper metal grid of the upstairs balcony, above the entry using only natural light. This location faces West, directly into the direction of the sun, as it appears, over the course of the earth’s daily rotation. The glass will catch morning sunlight from the East through the open atrium and afternoon sunlight from the West.

Dichroic glass is a product of thin film technology – the fusing of thin metallic films on a substrate in a vacuum, a process developed for the aerospace industry and research utilizing the physics of light. This exquisite material transmits one wavelength of light, reflects the complement, it absorbs a negligible amount of light. I use this high-tech material in combination with other raw materials to invest objects with the vocabulary of space, building on simple ideas as an entry point into the universe and our place in it.

The structure is reduced to a minimum, raw industrial materials are utilized with a distinct reference to time and place. The combination of minimal raw metal and dichroic glass evokes a temporal shift in space.

Installed on the second level above the entry, aligned on an East-West plane, the art installation transmits an array of colors filtered from natural sunlight. Light is dispersed in two directions, East and West – into the open spaces of both the interior and exterior. The modernist framework is installed onto the original metal grid, facing West towards the street

This installation is about the light and the great spaces of Los Angeles, the multiple colors of the City’s people. The artwork references a period of Los Angeles’ rapid post-war growth, as well as, the light speed evolution of communications, referencing our rich past, maintaining a keen vision towards the future, hope, and a connection to the greater forces of the universe.