flow

Conceived as a material dialog in naturalistic form, thematic color and narrative streams, flow is a multi-media environmental artwork for Oak Tree Park and Water Flume Line Trail.  Creating multiple esthetic elements that range from iconic landmarks to small moments, the overall intent is to weave a story about daily journeys we share with our fellow inhabitants.  The conceptual core of the project is the infrastructural idea that water is the source of life in its many forms on our small blue planet.  More background on conceptual development for the project may be found at waterflume.blogspot.com.

Since we last met, I’ve processed the feedback received during our December Review in which priorities were developed from a longer list of possible approaches.  Working through the notes on preferences, I had to tease out an imaginary consensus since there appeared to be no definitive set of priorities.  So the balance I struck was between what I heard as vocal enthusiasm for particular elements tempered by a larger concern for esthetic cohesion.

In developing the Final Design, consideration has been given to such things as visibility, functionality, community engagement, value and durability.  There is also a balance to be struck between permanence and ephemerality, iconography and narrative, cultural commentary and environmental activism.  The summative experience is a wandering through meaning and landscape, drawing park and trail users into a cognitive and physical dialogue with the South Tacoma neighborhoods they traverse.

I consider the Final Design a visually poetic meander from Oak Tree Park meadows along Water Flume Line Trail to the Tacoma Water Pump House.  Call it an anthropocenic twist on a classic fairytale (Jack the Giant Killer aka Jack and the Beanstalk circa 1711) that provides a unifying metaphor for four distinctive projects entitled…   

free

fly

flow

flume