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Bubble for UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital

2014

(unrealized)

Proposal for UCSF Benioff’s Children's Hospital


I want to make a sculpture that conveys a sense of play, fluidity, wonder-- a sense of life.

 

The giant amorphic bubble is a fleeting embodiment of air and water currents with the added element of the rainbow spectrum. Soap film moves and stretches, and in the process, refracts light into vivid, transitory displays of color. Trying to capture this phenomenon in a sculpture could be considered a self-defeating exercise. I don't want to make a trompe l'oeil bubble.
Rather, using the intense color arrays and shifting sense of transparency and opacity that characterize these bubbles, I intend to make a sculpture that is a depiction of a bubble. I am imagining a piece with a quirky shape and a surface that changes throughout the day, under different lighting conditions. The form might be transparent in some areas and opaque or reflective in others.

 

The shape and scale would be determined by the ultimate site. For this proposal I have chosen to locate the piece near the 16th Street entrance to the complex so that it could be viewed from all sides, but it could be sited elsewhere on the campus and altered to fit the space more appropriately.
 

It would be critical to do some exploratory fabrication work as a next step. I would like to consider concrete, molded plexiglass, and cast metal as the potential palette of materials for this sculpture. How color can be applied or incorporated into these materials will play an important role in the final piece.

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