Reaching Deep
© 2013
Location: in the studio
Installation Project for Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Jeff Carpenter and Anthony Vogt
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center commissioned us to create an installation art project in the entranceway gallery of the Brooklyn Infusion Center, a facility that provides chemotherapy services to their patients in Brooklyn. The theme of their program was “Roots, Drawing Connections Through Community,” their aim to highlight the feeling of community that exists between the caregivers and patients, and, by extension, their neighbors. The gallery was visible from the street through some large windows; in fact for many viewers, it was perhaps the only impression they had of this project.
We took the idea of roots quite literally, to surround you in roots, made with electrically charged wires that glow. They’re dipped in resin and spread on sheer fabric hanging in the windows and mounted on the back wall. In front of that wall hangs another layer of sheer fabric, in several draped panels. On them the roots are drawn in phosphorous ink, interspersed with lines of text drawn from the patients and doctors about their experiences, their discoveries and their tips on staying strong.
The installation is like a three dimensional grotto that kaleidoscopes as you walk past the windows, or through the room. High on the walls and columns of the gallery are paintings on light boxes that show views up through water to the trees and sky above. These were painted on several layers of Plexiglas within each lightbox, so they too have a depth that subtly kaleidoscopes as you walk about, that accentuates the depth of that water and the rippling of the image seen through the water. So depth is a motif here, creating an environment that envelopes the viewer, that embraces you in an imagined world below ground, executed in gauzy fabric, pale phosphorous ink calligraphy and subtle glowing lines of light that reach out in organic ways beyond you and around you.
Project dimensions: 20' x 40' x 11'
