PAPER LETTER CLOUD

We follow stories through pages, tracing a winged migration route through the imagined world. Writing guides us along the flight path in a weaving course of words creating stories. Leaves of paper left to the winds of the tale... hands turning pages. 

Our spoken words and thoughts have been written, printed, recorded, placed on film then miniaturized to a digital pixel of the hand print on a computer keyboard. Libraries are now world word information centers holding our collective stories and marking the trail to expanding and understanding other ways of thinking, seeing and dreaming. 

We recently spent several months working on a commissioned sculptural work for a new library in the Salt Lake City area. The Viridian Library and Event Center is a beautiful new Leeds Gold rated building at the city center of West Jordan south of Salt Lake City. The art committee chose us to produce a work that could integrate the three areas of the building, create a flow between the library, the central lobby and the event center within the building complex.  

The resulting design of the work came about through various means. We wanted the work to involve a simple form of flying and floating paper, letter forms and pixelated color. Within the library space were deep light wells extending up through the central lobby atrium entry as well as the main library room. The library sky lights also extended up through the second floor staff offices and further to the roof top at 50' from the library floor. What a great aerial space to work with! 

The aerial sculpture traces a trail from the pictographic to the formation of letters and words, to paper, book, library and to the digital language of binary information process. We imagined the entire work to trace our evolution from the beginning of language to the present form of global information sharing. It's been a long journey.

The work itself is also long....close to five hundred feet from one end to the other. It meanders and floats through the ceiling spaces, into the skylight wells and down hallways at the facility creating discovery areas and flashing changing color patterns from the dichroic units of the 'cloud' mobiles. A cascade of letters descend from the high light wells in the library and weave among the paper and flying book forms. The paper then floats into the entry lobby, up the central skylight to a flock of gently moving mobiles. The trail of paper forms then drifts to the Event center hallway transforming into cloud-like pixel grid mobiles that float above. 

After a week of installing the mobile units the staff at the library were very pleased with the results. The gentle movements and soft color changes set a quiet tone to the building and we hope will lift the spirits of the people visiting the library and event center there.