Patricia Reser Centre for the Arts (The Reser) Beaverton Oregon 2022

A dandelion puff floats above the lobby. Delicate yet robust the sculpture is made of metal and mirrors, each shaped like a rearview mirror. On the floor below is stained the shadows of two drifting dandelion seeds.

The dandelion puff - so transitory - suggests the innocence, freedom and memories of a child dreaming in the summer sun, and the poignancy of time passing. This form also refers to a mirrorball - to dance, extravagance, the excitement of opening night - and to you becoming part of the show. The mirrors are a subtle reference to a quote by Marshall McLuhan, “We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror”.

Puff casts shadows and flashes of reflections, and captures fragmented images of the surrounding world, giving the sculpture an ever-changing, ephemeral quality. Puff (rearviewmirrorball) is rooted in ideas of nature, culture and artifice.

We developed an art framework plan for the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. This plan conflated ideas of performance and imagery of the natural world. Especially influential was the local landscape, one shaped, engineered, manufactured by extensive beaver dams; and the idea of the stage set, a constructed landscape of the imagination. From this idea of the manufactured landscape came four artworks, one of which is puff (rearviewmirrorball).

Fabrication and installation by Gizmo Art Production, Inc.