An Equal and Opposite Reaction

Artist Statement: For Marion Oliver McCaw Hall I have created a sculpture titled “An Equal or Opposite Reaction”, a phrase borrowed from Newton’s Third Law of Motion.  Movement through the lobby determines the form on the sculpture in several ways.  As the viewer enters the Lobby, the vortex structure of the sculpture is designed to sweep the viewer’s sight line up into the space above.  Entering from the direction of the café, the spinning vortex acts as an eddy, if you will, in the flow of light and space that curves down the hall.  From the different views offered by the balconies and the stairs of the lobby, a multitude of vantage points are revealed as the sculpture is viewed in the round, and the climbing and tumbling structures within the sculpture play on the movement of the two stairways that flank the piece’s location.

On the one hand, the sculpture itself explores structures that are losing mass, stripped down and revealing skeletal structures, building-like foundations, or underlying support mechanisms that lie beneath.  While on the other hand, they describe organic systems in growth, development, climbing and accumulating.  In this way the piece attempts to describe an entire organism still in the process of building or falling apart.

Location: Seattle Center, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer Street, Seattle WA 98109