Storm King Artist Residency

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project type: student work, second-year fall semester

program: an artist residency/gallery/artist studio

location: New Windsor, NY

completion: 12.2013

The Storm King Art center is an open-air museum which has extended the concept of a “sculpture garden” to become a

sculpture landscape. Originally a gravel quarry, the land of Storm King has been modified and constructed multiple times in

order to give the illusion of a natural pastoral landscape and in order to better suit the existing sculptures. The purpose of my artist residency is to change the viewers perspective of Storm King and to draw them away from the unnatural “perfect” landscape and reveal the fabricated artificial terrain that really is Storm King. This is done by over exaggerating the new landscape and the building with the ribbing pattern while also using a reflective exterior skin to distort the Storm King scenery and by using a mesh interior skin to show a fragmented view of the landscape from within. Another important condition in my residency is trying to separate the artist from the general public. The artists live in between the walls and also work on top of the galleries. There are no overlaps and no connections of the different circulations. This gives a fishbowl effect where the artists can look into the galleries and see how the public is reacting and interacting to the artwork without being seen.

Alexander Calder’s sculptures are a major part of Storm King’s art collection. The focus was on Calder’s mobiles and to track the path. The sculpture that I analyzed was Calder’s Triple Gong

The movement was based upon a set of rules. The rule is to rotate the arms 45° then move them south depending on the length of the arm.

After tracking the path of the sculpture, this path will then be used to create a parametric design.

Using the program Grasshopper I took an octo-hedron and moved it along the path that was created by the Calder sculpture. After multiple variations and adjusting the Grasshopper loop, I found the right shape.

After obtaining the initial geometry. Then a set of Boolean rules were used to create the voids in the geometry.

A major part of this artist residency is to expose the artificial aspect of Storm King’s landscape. In order to acheive

this, the land surrounding the artist residency would be overly exaggerated in order to contrast the pastoral landscape.

The land would have a ribbing texture similar to the building.

Left: Topography Drawing

Right: Exterior Rendering

The building contains two floors, the first floor has four art galleries and eight artist suites. The second floor has an administrative office,and an artist studio. There is a separation of artist from the general public. The artists live in between the walls of the galleries and watch what is happening in the galleries through a one way mirror. The building has an interior steel skin and an exterior mirror skin that has the same ribbing pattern as the landscape.