Project Team:
Animation – Slanted Studios
Glass Fabrication – Franz Mayer of Munich
Programming – Dev Harlan, Ian Smith-Heisters, Michelle Higa Fox
Project Management – Dana Hemenway
Art Consultant – Erdreich White Fine Art
Flourish is a 70-foot long site-specific artwork commissioned by the Liberty Mutual Group for an executive corridor in the corporation’s headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. This unique piece combines artist Camille Utterback’s signature interactive installation work with a new display method – projection onto multiple layers of custom glazed and sandblasted glass.
Flourish consists of seven double-layered 5 by 8 foot glass panels, three of which are interactive. As viewers walk by the interactive panels, projected elements that correspond to the glass design react to viewers’ presence and location – colors splash across the background, a tree grows leaves, or releases them to float on the wind. The piece’s name, Flourish, refers to the exuberant swirling patterns that flow through the linear composition, as well as the imagery’s references to life, creativity, and growth.
To create the glass panels for Flourish, Utterback experimented and worked extensively with historic glass fabricator Franz Mayer of Munich. The multi-color glass panels contain iridescent, opaque, translucent and sandblasted areas, creating a layered and sensual surface, which allows the projected light to reflect off of, or combine with the glass in different ways. The double layers of glass give the projection actual physical depth, allowing projected elements to exist in front of or behind each other, depending which opaque area in which layer of glass catches the light. The translucent areas allow for a different effect, similar to stained glass, where projected blue light shining through a yellow translucent area creates the perception of green. Alternatively, projected white light shining on a sandblasted area creates a shadow of the sandblasted element on the wall behind it.
Utterback has employed this complex layering of light and physical materials to take full advantage of our evolved binocular seeing – which can perceive depth and subtleties of color much more richly than what is possible with a projection on a flat white wall.
Special Thanks to:
Cathryn Griffith
Mike Hansen
Robert Minervini
Joseph Melamed
Sarah Cowan
