Partners Healthcare - 2016
In the Fall of 2015, I was approached to make a proposal for large artworks for the new Sommerville headquarters for Partners healthcare, an organization regrouping 13 Boston area hospitals.
As with all site specific commissions, I asked to visit the location, and to get a 3D model which I could pull into my modeling software so as to project my proposed art onto actual dimensional spaces. Building and working with such models is at first an arduous process, but well worth it in the end
I’m always drawn to answering outside of the box.
One of the lobbies also sported a four story wall with a staircase in front of it, which beckoned to me despite the fact that it was not part of the available spaces for this commission. At the time I was working on my Network Series and could not let go of the idea I had for that wall, for a huge multi-panel tree, defined on red ochre canvases by painting in the negative spaces in white paint, much as I had been doing in the Networks.
Sometimes these visions are meant to be… and sometimes they are not…
If you are interested in what a great rejected proposal looks like go see this one here.
My second proposal, which did spark enthusiasm, suggested highlighting the region which the Partners network served, by connecting it to the flow of water into Boston.
To give this the density of meaning which I think artwork must have, I folded this particular view of the landscape into my own work with Networks into a map of of the Greater Boston catchment basin.
