MEADVILLE, Pa. — Jan. 6, 2003 — It looks amazing because it is.
London-based American artist Danny Lane has created an installation of public art on the Allegheny College campus that is thought to be the largest solid-volume glass sculpture grouping of its kind in the world. The complete composition, Presence of Seven in the Light of Movement, is a dramatic ring of seven sculptures made up of 100,000 lbs. and 2,700 pieces of half-inch-thick green float glass plates “shish-kebabbed” into the ground with stainless steel rods.
The tallest three pieces in the luminous composition, the Three Graces, rise 17 feet before an open sky on the southeast quadrant of the circle. Lane says these three sculptures are extremely important because they are the pieces that greet people as they enter the composition for the first time.
The Wedge, a 28-foot-long wall of vertically layered glass, literally cuts through the northeast bench of Senior Circle, demanding personal interaction with observers.
“It’s a bold position,” says Lane. “This sculpture has power over the benches.” As people physically move near or around the piece, “images appear, disappear, and reappear,” Lane adds.
The interaction of observers with the art is of particular interest to Lane, who says, “As people move near the sculptures, as they touch the pieces, their perceptions change. Parabolic arcs of light and dark move when the observer moves—the observer becomes part of the creation.”
In the northwest quadrant are three curved, dancing walls of glass about 7 feet wide and 10 feet high. They provide a fascinating visual interaction with ivy-clad Cochran Hall, which the college plans to restore to become the new Alumni Center.
The site for the sculptures is at Senior Circle, a circular pedestrian intersection ringed by benches on Quade Walk, the well-traveled brick walkway between Cochran Hall and the Montgomery Gymnasium. The location is ideal, says Lane, because it is in a relatively new part of campus, and an area of significant student transit and congregation.
To build on the existing asset of pedestrian traffic, the radius of Senior Circle has been enlarged, extending the brick walkway 8 feet beyond the current ring of benches. This serves to enhance the beauty of the site and encourage people to walk up to and around the sculptures.
A complex system of lighting enhances the sculptures at night. London-based Future Group Lighting Design created the system of backlighting as well as lights to illuminate each structure.
A Distinctive Message
Allegheny College hopes that the physical dimensions and artistic distinctiveness of this installation will send a clear message about the depth and distinction of its programs in arts and humanities.
“Allegheny College has been best known nationally for excellence in the sciences and programs in pre-med, pre-law, environmental studies, and writing. With installation of these world-class public sculptures, Allegheny is making a statement about the value of the arts and humanities and about the quality of our faculty and programs in those areas.” Allegheny President Richard Cook says. “Students flourish here in the arts as well as in the natural and social sciences.”
Gift of Grace
College Trustee and alumnus, Silas Mountsier III, class of 1952, himself a beneficiary of a liberal arts education, commissioned the installation. A former vice president of United States Trust Company of New York, Mountsier is also responsible for, among many other campus improvements, Quade Walk, which was a gift from the Henry and Henrietta Quade Foundation, (New York, NY), and himself.
“Danny’s art brings me joy, just pure joy,” says Mountsier, who learned to appreciate art in all of its dimensions and disciplines at Allegheny College and would like to share that gift with students of the 21st century.
Mountsier recalls that as a student, he would go outside, walk down to Rustic Ravine (just southeast of Bentley Hall), and there, surrounded by the grace and splendor of that landscape, his problems would somehow seem to take their proper position. It is Mountsier’s hope that Allegheny students for the next thousand years will have a similar experience when they are surrounded by the beauty and grace of Lane’s art.
To the tremendous benefit of Allegheny College, its students, faculty and staff, and to the community, Mountsier’s dream of adding more beauty and grace to Allegheny’s campus has now become reality.
The composition, the first professional outdoor installation of art on Allegheny’s campus, was publicly dedicated this fall during the College’s four-day Celebration of the Liberal Arts Weekend.
Side Bar
How Did They Do It?
Assistants Mark Burgess and Daryl Davis and Project Manager Jasper Vaughan worked for more than three weeks at the sculpture site, assembling the composition. Vaughan is an architect and manages the project on site. “He’s an eccentric architect,” says Lane. “He embraces the engineering theory, and the inner meaning of the work.” Davis, who has worked with Lane for 18 years, is a glass specialist. Burgess comes to the team with a design background and has worked with Lane for two years.
Crate by crate, and piece by piece, each plate of glass (about 2700 pieces, weighing approximately 100,000 lbs.) is carefully unpacked, wiped clean, lifted, and stacked onto long steel rods that extend beneath the ground into a 4-foot cement foundation. The pieces are then adjusted horizontally using a jig—a wooden frame individually engineered and built to provide a form to ensure each sculpture’s precise alignment. Allegheny mathematics professor Ronald Harrell provided the calculations for the jigs that were used in this installation. When working at heights of more than 5 or 6 feet, the crew must use a hydraulic lift to raise the heavy crates of glass.
The glass pieces of each sculpture are held together solely by compression—no adhesive bonding material is needed. A hydraulic jack is used to stretch the stainless steel rod, using up to 20 tons tension on each rod, so that the glass pieces can be “locked” together as a large nut is tightened onto a compression plate at the top of the rod.
Acutec Precision Machining, Inc., Saegertown, Pa., designed and donated the nuts, which maintain the sculptures’ tension. The shape of each nut is individually designed to complement the aesthetic design of each sculpture. Glass under such pressure is many times stronger than concrete, strong enough to withstand hurricane-force winds.
Established in 1815, Allegheny College is a nationally
recognized,
selective college of the liberal arts and sciences in northwestern Pennsylvania.
Set of six photos (365 Kb .pdf file)
Moonlight Over Meadville (760 Kb .jpg file)
