moving space diorama

I was able to install the moving space diorama

just the other day, after a couple of months of planning.

Before:

This public art work by Jill Anholt (Moving Pictures, 2005) was vandalized last year and the exposed metal interiors were attracting garbage. It was such a great little pair of spaces, but they were in a bad way and I wanted to try to make them better somehow. I came up with a bunch of ideas and the one with the concentric circles stuck - I made a maquette with cardboard (as shown in earlier posts) and was able to do some tests at 1:1 scale. I tried a number of materials and realized that hanging would be best structurally and that whatever it was, it should be weatherproof and easy enough to install and remove. I contacted Jill and explained where I was coming from, and asked her permission for doing this installation. She explained how it was taking a long time for the City to get around to fixing her piece, and she graciously agreed to let me do it.

After:

It was a straightforward installation. We swept up broken glass and cigarette butts and burnt bits of paper (one of the interiors is charred from a fire), and removed bent bolts from holding up the original 'lens' pieces. The layers of pink pleather that we put up are just scored, bent, and stuck to the 'ceiling' using double-sided tape.

We've been back at different times of day to see how it looks. It's interesting to see how the daylight changes the effect of the layers.

If you'd like a copy of the 'announcement' pdf document for this piece, send an email to spacemakeplace@gmail.com