Artist: Blue McRight
Project Title: Home:Office
Date Completed: 2011
Commissioned by: State of Washington Dept. of Information Services
Project Location: State Capital East Campus, Olympia, Washington

Home:Office brings the legendary JLARC building forward as a physical presence at the DIS (Wheeler) Site while honoring its history in the community.

Designed by local architect George L. Ekvall in 1949 as the Clow Apartments, the building was residential until the 1980’s, when it became offices for the State of Washington and by 1994, specifically for the State’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) until its demolition in 2009.

Throughout, the building retained its residential flavor. Home:Office is expressive of the layers of meaning inherent to the conflation of domestic and business space over sixty years. The world of home and the world of office both contain desks. Informed by this idea are the larger than life Brick Desk and Bronze Desk sculptures. Part of the actual JLARC building has been incorporated: the Brick Desk is made from bricks salvaged prior to its demolition. On the desktop is a stainless steel Laptop incorporating didactic materials that provide a concise history of the JLARC building. The “screen” features a porcelain enamel black and white photo of the building taken in 1949, shortly after completion; its “keyboard” is an etched text panel.

The Bronze Desk features a repeating pattern of etched and cutout bird silhouettes, its regularity a reference to DIS data systems. These birds, the Steller’s Jay and the Horned Lark, are found in Washington State year-round. Together they symbolize the JLARC acronym. Illuminated from within, the cutout bird shapes glow at night.

The third sculpture at the Artwork Plaza is the steel JLARC Footprint, its form the first floor plan of the building. The natural rust finish of the steel references a local landmark: the orange-painted residence directly across the street from the former location of the building.

The Artwork Plaza is a primary element of Home:Office and the location of this group of sculptures, creating a focal point along major pathways linking the DIS campus and the adjoining neighborhood. Granite pavers in a running bond pattern reference the horizontal siding of nearby houses. Interspersed within the pattern are 16 square pavers symbolizing the makeup of the JLARC: eight Democrats and eight Republicans.

Home:Office creates a place at the new Department of Information Services campus for a meaningful neighborhood landmark to be remembered.

Artist: Blue McRight
Project Title: Twist and Sprout
Date Completed: 2007
Commissioned by: City of San Diego Public Art Program
Project Location: North University Community Branch Library and
Nobel Park Recreation Center, San Diego, California

Intellectual expansion and physical development were significant factors in establishing a meaningful sense of place here. The two main buildings, library and recreation center, can be seen as symbolizing the mind and the body respectively. Their juxtaposition embodies their connection; thus, the Nobel complex represents the whole person.

Visiting the site for the first time, I noticed a mature acacia tree amidst the chaparral. The elegant shapes of its elongated leaves and the gracefully bending stems of the site’s wild grasses inspired my artwork design. However, surrounding this chaparral zone is extensive development. “Bio” (the natural environment) literally and metaphorically encountered “tech”(the built environment), resulting in a new and hybrid form.

I created an artwork for the exterior of each building: Twist and Sprout. Each artwork is a focal point at the buildings’ entries. Through related forms and content viewers are able to visually and conceptually link the artworks to each other and to their locations.

At the Library, Sprout, a large-scale light sculpture, is sited on a circular plinth near the main entrance. Composed of two stainless steel forms reminiscent of leaves or pods balanced by a stainless steel stem, Sprout is a plant/machine hybrid. Illuminated from within, the work has distinct day and night aspects. At dusk, light shines through cut out letters – T’s, A’s, C’s, and G’s – the “alphabet” of DNA. This “alphabet” is a metaphor for alphabets used in the Library’s collections. Pairings of the nucleotides Thymine, Adenine, Cytosine, and Guanine produce DNA’s elegant double helix structure, and is the basis for the “Genomic Library”. The double helix structure symbolizes the universal origin and connection of all life, and references the importance of the biotech industry to nearby UC San Diego as well as the University City community.

Twist extends the theme of bio/tech at the Recreation Center, integrating the classic double helix pattern of DNA strands into the colored concrete paving delineating the main entrance by using circular brass survey markers set into the paving. Each marker is engraved with the T’s, A’s, C’s, and G’s of the DNA “alphabet”; here, they can be seen metaphorically as genetic markers, part of the physicality of our bodies.

Artist Team: Blue McRight, Lead Artist and
Warren Wagner, Architect
Project Title: River and Rain
Date Completed: 2005
Commissioned by: City of Redmond, Washington
Project Location: City Hall Garage, Redmond City Hall campus, Redmond, WARiver and Rain expresses the importance of water to the City of Redmond in an artwork linking Redmond’s culture and history while physically incorporating the City Hall Garage into the local hydrologic cycle of rain, aquifer, and river. Located adjacent to Well #4, a major source of city drinking water, the Garage is also near the Sammamish River. The same aquifer that supplies Well #4 also feeds the river. We have utilized the phenomena of river and rain to establish literal as well as metaphoric connections between the natural and urban worlds.

The river and its recreational aspects are significant factors in establishing a meaningful sense of place. We met with long time residents who told stories about annual boat races on the Sammamish with thousands of spectators.

Ideas about Sammamish River recreation are relevant now because Redmond is rediscovering the river – present day Riverwalk users are taking on stewardship of the natural riparian environment. By referring to its history and use we seek to conceptually and physically connect river to city, past to present.

River and Rain consists of seven large-scale sculptural rain chains that connect the top of the Garage to the ground. Each is a series of bronze oarlocks and boat shapes linked together. Oarlocks were chosen not only to represent river travel; they also symbolize the importance of technology to Redmond (home of Microsoft) in that their shape can be read as both “0” and “1” – the foundation of computer codes. The chains are connected to a header that collects rainwater from the roof of the garage stair tower. Stainless steel boat forms are placed at the top of and along each chain, the overall effect being one of implied motion, as if a race is taking place on the Garage façade. Frequent rain adds a kinetic dimension as it cascades down the length of the sculpture chains to disappear into a bed of river stones and percolate through to the aquifer below.

References to modes of river transportation enhance the program of the Garage as a transportation facility. But seeing the shape and history of the river itself is also important. On the ground level, a series of laminated glass panels displays a graphic pattern of alternating shapes, showing the original course of the Sammamish and the present course after being straightened by the Army Corps of Engineers. These panels are illuminated at night by headlights of cars in the Garage. Thus the shape of the river becomes part of the Garage, identifying the site and further connecting river and city, viewer and place.

Artist: Blue McRight
Project Title: Luminaries
Date Completed: 2003
Commissioned by: State of California, Department of Health Services
Project Location: Main Lobby of the Department of Health Services,
Capitol Area East End, Sacramento, CaliforniaLuminaries is comprised of two groups of hanging aluminum light sculptures. Their placement establishes a relationship between the two groups that charges the space and includes the entire lobby as part of the art. Each hangs from the ceiling along the curved walls; a group of three near the east wall and a group of seven near the west wall. Both numbers are rich in symbolism.

The individual forms of the sculptures are organic shapes executed in industrial materials. They embody both nature and culture, which in turn symbolize the essence of California — its history, its light, its natural beauty, its technologies and customs. Their rounded curves echo the elliptical plan of the lobby. The east wall group, suspended from curving stems, projects patterns of shadows onto the wall. The west wall group, of translucent acrylic with aluminum mesh and tubing, reveals the patterns of shadow on the inside surfaces of the sculptures. All utilize low voltage halogen lamps and are responsive to variable light conditions.

A quotation by American author Willa Cather (1873 – 1947) inscribed on panels mounted on the west wall expands the experience of place by referencing natural cycles. Cather poetically describes the powerful sight of the sun setting and the full moon rising at the same time, as the viewer watches from the center of a level field, much as a viewer on the level lobby floor perceives the light sculptures, floating at different heights on either side of the space. Thus, the artwork metaphorically connects the viewer to the world outside.

Artist: Blue McRight
Project Title: Garland
Date Completed: 1999
Commissioned by: Los Angeles Arena Company, LLC
Project Location: Corner of Figueroa St. and 12th Dr., Los Angeles, California

In ancient arenas and sacred architecture, the spectator’s journey proceeded through a succession of layers toward the action at the center.

Today at Staples Center Garland, named for the wreath given to athletic victors in ancient Greece, presents the first layer occurring between the street and the stage. It consists of a sequence of identical elements: seven sculptural lanterns of stainless steel. Installed on an arc across the plaza, the lanterns tilt and rise in height from one through seven, accenting a feeling of movement and gesture. Each is on axis with a major public space in downtown Los Angeles.

Distinct day and night aspects respond to the building’s programming. By day, the artwork casts shadows that move with the sun’s angle. At night, the lanterns project “nets” of light patterns onto surrounding surfaces. Illuminated from within, each lantern’s skin of woven wire creates various moire effects that shift with the viewer’s perspective, creating an interactive aspect.

Garland engages the “choreography of arrival” of pedestrians: as people pass between the lanterns they literally enter the artwork, whose semicircular form creates a “plaza-within-a-plaza” at the entry doors.

A bronze benchmark in the paving near the doors marks the point of the lanterns’ imaginary convergence by identifying its exact longitude and latitude. Its emblem is a triskelion, ancient Greek symbol of competition and progress.

Artist Team: Blue McRight, Lead artist; Warren Wagner, architect
Project Title: Traveller
Date Completed: 1998
Commissioned by: The City of San Buenaventura Public Art Program
Project Location: Downtown Parking Structure
555 E. Santa Clara Street, Ventura, CaliforniaTraveller is a site-specific, environmental work of public art inspired by the history and program of its site. Of particular interest to us was the well-established Chumash village, Shishilop, at what is now Ventura, where the Brotherhood of the Canoe made the unique board canoes that enabled their culture to flourish. The artwork makes connections between that era and our contemporary one at a structure designed to accommodate the automobile, our culture’s favored mode of transportation.Consisting of two groups of steel light sculptures, the project is installed in two locations. On the main entrance’s south-facing shear wall at Santa Clara Street, there are three sculptures and on the Paseo side, two smaller sculptures on the pedestrian landing mark that entry.Traveller presents different aspects by day and by night, casting shadows and projecting patterns of light onto adjacent surfaces of the Parking Structure, thereby incorporating the building as part of the art. All of the lanterns are illuminated by solar electricity, generated during the day via photovoltaic panels mounted high on the Santa Clara Street wall. Besides powering the artwork, the solar panels are featured artwork elements: contemporary symbols of the sun.Fernando Librado, who built the last Chumash canoe, became the oral historian of the local tribe when he was extensively interviewed as a very old man. His words are engraved in the concrete wall below the light sculptures:

“The board canoe is the house of the sea”.

Artist Team: Blue McRight, Lead artist; and
Warren Wagner, architect
Project Title: Hope Street Terminus: The Garden of Conversion
Date Completed: 1996
Commissioned by: City of Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency
Project Location: Hope Street Terminus at 17th St., Los AngelesHope Street Terminus: The Garden of Conversion is a site-specific environmental work of public art that transformed a blighted area of Caltrans property underneath the 10 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles into open space for the community.The project incorporates the freeway structure as part of the artwork with a steel lantern sculpture, which, at night, uses the underside of the freeway deck, and adjacent areas as surfaces for projected patterns of light and shadow. The lantern is illuminated by solar electricity, generated during the day via photovoltaic panels mounted at the entrance to the site.

The lantern’s base is a large concrete bench which channels storm water and functions as seating for the site, its mosaic surface created from recycling actual Hope Street asphalt. Inspired by place name as metaphor, inscribed onto the sides of the bench is the work HOPE is 48 languages.

Groups of drought tolerant plantings complete the artwork.