The birth of hip hop in the 1970s coincided with a surge of interest in chess among Americans, inspired by Bobby Fischer’s landmark victory in the 1972 World Chess Championship. As our great American cities struggled with issues of race and class, a new generation of players enthusiastically competed over the board and a new art form flourished.
'Living Like Kings' explores this unlikely collision, making clear that the lessons one can learn from the mic and the chessmen transcend the categories race, class, faith, and culture. The 2-channel video installation documents where and how these two worlds intersect and provide a unique lens through which to see our nation grapple with significant issues.
Completed in 2014
The aim of Currents was to transform the atrium wall at the Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis, MO into an undulating sculpture whose subtle, elegant movements call to mind the currents of a river. Once flat and bare, the wall now seems to stretch and extend, expanding its reach like a dancer in motion, or like the institution of COCA itself. The skin-like topography of the wall expresses a cascade of movement, with the ripples and waves flowing together in a soothing, soul-nourishing rhythm.
These bands of movement honor COCA's sense of place and community, where people of diverse backgrounds come together to experience a diversity of creative arts, then return to create ripples in their own communities.
This physical representation of one aspect of the COCA experience is balanced by sound and light that represents the other key aspect of the COCA experience-dynamic movement and energetic creativity embodied by artists engaged in theater and dance. Original soundscape compositions and coordinated theatrical lighting with integrated color and pattern switchers are triggered by the movements of visitors in the space, washing the installation in sound, color, and light in a personalized, continually-changing experience.
Collaboration with Jill Downen
Completed in 2010
Sukkah City STL was an international design competition dedicated to the reimagining of the traditional Jewish harvest structure, the sukkah.
Co-sponsored by St. Louis Hillel, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and The Museum of ImaJewnation, the competition challenged participants to reimagine the traditional Jewish sukkah—a small, temporary structure erected each fall during the weeklong festival of Sukkot—through the lens of contemporary art and architecture.
The sukkah, titled Storycubes, was one of 10 selected by a panel of judges from more than 40 entries from artists, designers, and architects nationwide. All the winning Sukkahs were displayed in front of the Women's Building on the Washington University campus from October 18-22, 2011.
The walls of the Storycubes Sukkah were built of open boxes, each one, two, or three handbreadths tall. Together, a set of boxes was six handbreadths tall—one cubit. Those dimensions were a nod to the official biblical measurement, but they also represented our journey. Often, the window of time and space we share with others—like the four years spent on a college campus—is brief, like the small window of the one-cubit boxes. Other times, such as in our lifelong relationships, the window of time we have together is, thankfully, much longer.
In each of these window boxes, visitors to the sukkah found small cubes, each painted a different color, and each marked with a different question about their personal journey, and transitions they have experienced. Visitors were free to move the cubes to different boxes to create different combinations of colors, and different patterns of light and dark. In doing so, they redefined the Sukkah itself, shifting its boundaries and changing the way light passed through it.
Collaboration with Trivers Architecture and the St. Louis Beacon
Completed in 2010
