By Tiffany Kramer
Dyersville, Iowa
Studio Art
My interest in the interaction of space and light, and the associations that people have with habitual spaces, are the conceptual foundations of "Suspended Flight," a summer research project that was funded through Macalester's Keck Student-Faculty Research grant and commissioned by the Psychology Department. Art Professor Mary Hark and I worked on the two-part sculpture together. It spans nearly 40 feet in length and approximately 8 feet in circumference, and it is suspended three stories in the air in the Olin-Rice Science Center.
| "If I had been told four years ago that I would be the artist of a sculpture spanning nearly forty feet and permanently installed here on campus, would probably have laughed." |
During the early stages of my research, I studied the formal and conceptual nuances of the Psychology Department and the architectural space in which it resides. Through discussions with psychology professors and students and other qualitative research, I considered the interrelationship between art and psychology. I particularly focused on how line and color are perceived by the eye and the brain; how shapes, forms and color can alter moods; and the way neural cells receive and transport visual imagery. I also documented environmental changes--the hourly and seasonal changes of light that occur within the space. Utilizing this collected information I worked to create an installation that allowed organic movement and color to emerge from within the physical and intellectual space this work inhabits.
If I had been told four years ago that I would be the artist of a sculpture spanning nearly forty feet and permanently installed here on campus, would probably have laughed. Now I think of this work as an important step in the process of my evolving artistic experience and I have Macalester, and professors like Mary Hark, to thank.
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