Contemporary Art Shaping Our Environment: Public Art and Architecture
Originally published in Arts Interviews, September 2011
Where art and money meet, there has always been a debate about quantifying creative work. But to begin appreciating art's contributions to society, one need only reflect on the vast offerings shaping our environment.
The impact of art on society can be seen in the appropriation and activation of space, whether through permanent or ephemeral means. Its value lies in its ability to address social concerns, contribute to current dialogue, engage the public, and influence how people see and relate to the world. Art can be functional, decorative, or symbolic, and artists employ a variety of strategies and media to alter the environment. There is inevitable overlap among artistic categories — environmental design can function as public art, and a public art piece can also serve as a monument. What follows is a sampling of contemporary public artists and architects using traditional and non-traditional practices to reshape our environment.
Throughout history, art has redefined the landscape of urban, rural, and virtual spaces. Most notably, during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy, the Medici family recognized art as a source of power and prestige for a city and its patrons. They commissioned artists like Botticelli to create influential portraits — including the Adoration of the Magi — and engaged the architectural genius of Filippo Brunelleschi to design and execute the largest brick dome ever completed, finishing the Florence Cathedral and asserting their dominance over the city. Even now, though to a far lesser extent, art can transform neighborhoods and cities into culturally and financially thriving destinations.
Public Art
Public art can be funded by the public, by nonprofit organizations, by government institutions, or by private individuals. Works commissioned for public spaces are usually selected by a committee and run through a democratic process in which the public has a voice, though that process can still be problematic. Funding can be called into question by taxpayers. Politics surrounding the chosen artist or design can dilute the original work. Sometimes, a commissioned piece is not wanted by the community it was intended for. Sometimes the piece itself falls short in execution. But the benefits of public art can outweigh its deficits. Public sculptures can revitalize communities by becoming tourist destinations, transforming a location into an attractive and functional gathering space, and raising awareness of histories and perspectives previously unacknowledged.
"It's gonna happen fast — I know that much" was Dale Chihuly's closing statement at a press conference regarding a proposed museum to be built at Seattle's Seattle Center. Although criticized for his decorative aesthetic and perceived lack of conceptual depth, Chihuly continues to spread the cult of glass art worldwide.
Born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1941, Chihuly is part of the Studio Glass Movement. He is the founder of the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA. His public art spans the globe, ranging from fragile pieces hung from corporate and private indoor ceilings to more accessible works experienced in the open air by passersby.
On entering Chihuly's home city of Tacoma, one can see the Chihuly Bridge of Glass. This 500-foot pedestrian bridge links Thea Foss Waterway with the Museum of Glass and incorporates three Chihuly components: two free-standing blue blown-glass assemblages, and his "Venetian Wall" — an eighty-foot windowed wall encasing a collection of colorful glass vessels. What Chihuly offers with his public art is one man's vision of aesthetic beauty. He presents the world with his fragile craft and asks viewers to suspend their disbelief, trusting them to look without touching.
Not all public artists focus primarily on the decorative. Japanese American artist Norie Sato has built a career combining her creative and organizational abilities with function and planning. Her public art installations are context-driven, focusing on transportation, parks, universities, airports, and other civic structures. Her practice blends aesthetics with practicality. Like many city-funded public artists, she begins each project by researching the site's history and gathering information about the people who live there, relying on public input and feedback. Her materials have included sculpture, glass, terrazzo floors, integrated design, landscape, video, and light.
Sato is perhaps best known for her comprehensive role in Seattle's light rail system project. Using the theme of "cultural conversations" to guide her work, she served simultaneously as curator — securing contributions from other artists to portions of the light rail — and as artist and planner, operating within the constraints of an engineering and architectural framework. Research led her to incorporate symbols of history and culture at different stations along the line. Her stone-carved lion sculpture, Pride, is the first of several intended to guard the Columbia City Station's South Plaza entrance. The lions offer a contemporary interpretation of the traditional Chinese lion entrance guard.
Spanish-born artist Jaume Plensa is known for figurative sculptures that gracefully transform public spaces across the United States, Europe, and Japan. His most recognized work, Crown Fountain, is situated in Millennium Park in Chicago. Unlike traditional fountains, Crown Fountain combines surprise, technology, architecture, and community interactivity to engage the viewer. Set in a shallow black granite reflecting pool, two glass towers project fifty-foot-tall faces — drawn from over 1,000 Chicago residents — via LED lights. Water playfully pours from the mouth of each face into the pool below, enjoyed by adults and children alike. The piece is socially resonant and functional, creating a visually stunning destination for all seasons.
Japanese-born artist Tadashi Kawamata creates public art installations that function more like urban interventions — sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent. Working with the concept of chaos in the urban setting, Kawamata uses simple and found materials to build imposing architectural structures that intertwine, growth-like, with pre-existing architecture. In 1989, he created a temporary outdoor installation in Toronto between two empty neoclassical bank buildings. Utilizing a complex structure of raw timbers cobbled together at a monolithic scale, the work depicted fractal, almost nest-like imagery representing the constant cycle of urban construction and destruction. While Kawamata's conceptual concerns may elude the average passerby, the scale of his work and the simplicity of his materials are at once striking and accessible.
"My work is not really about nature, but rather a consideration of ideas of nature," says Mark Dion. The Massachusetts-born installation artist is known for creating work that challenges the cataloging and presentation systems used in museums of science, history, and art. Through his practice, he questions the ability of dominant institutions to serve as keepers and sharers of accumulated history — whether anthropological, sociological, or otherwise. Among his most compelling works is Neukom Vivarium at Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park.
Neukom Vivarium is a complex ecosystem of ferns, firs, elders, hemlocks, Oregon grape, slugs, and insects — among other things — that survives on a giant, horizontal, decomposing log inside a terrarium-like structure. Visitors can witness the process of growth and decay through glass windows from outside, or enter the building to observe the transformation up close, with guides available to discuss the artist's intentions and the project's history.
Dion's piece succeeds on multiple levels. The iconography of the tree is a fitting choice for a sculpture park situated in the Pacific Northwest, where the tension between logging and conservation is an enduring concern. Like a working ecosystem, the installation offers itself as a place of learning for artists, scientists, and the general public. Its time-based quality — the continuous transformation of a living system — draws viewers back to witness change over time.
A contemporary current in art embraces community involvement with an eco-conscious edge. One artist collaboration transforming public spaces using both of those principles is Fallen Fruit, based in Los Angeles. This collective — David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young — creates community projects that use fruit as both a symbol and a practical medium. Questions of desire, relationship to the land, ownership, and mythology surround projects like Public Fruit Tree Adoptions, in which fruit trees are donated to the public, who must plant them in public spaces or along the edges of private ones. The benefit is both practical and aesthetic. Fallen Fruit, quite literally, nourishes the body and the mind.
Architecture
Like public art, architecture carries its own complexities. Unlike public art, architectural structures are often brought about without a democratic process involving the community. They are frequently privately funded and need not follow the same community support protocols. While buildings often must adhere to guidelines regarding location and context, a structure can be erected that entirely disregards established architecture in favor of an imposing form. Still, the field is evolving to include environmental concerns and alternative approaches to living space — a departure from the notion of the egocentric, dominating structure in favor of the pedestrian.
In a field where celebrity status rules, Frank Gehry is no exception. Since gaining recognition for his "Easy Edges" cardboard furniture in the 1970s, he has earned numerous awards and wide renown for his architecture. "I have always believed that art leads the way for architecture. Now it is technology's turn. But art will always be there to inspire architecture," stated I.M. Pei in reference to Gehry's designs. With his deconstructivist approach and gravity-defying structures, Gehry continues to make his mark on the built landscape — to either the awe or the discontent of those who must live with it.
Some of his earlier work is a welcome complement to its setting — Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, for example. Other works, such as the Experience Music Project in Seattle, read as gaudy, imposing, and overdeveloped. Where his style succeeds is in spectacle that doesn't overwhelm — the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain being the defining example. A welcome addition to the region, the Guggenheim honors the city's identity as a steel town through its titanium exterior cladding, which reflects light and contrasts with the gray Basque sky. Its free-form shapes echo the curves of the river alongside which it sits. Dominant from the water, the building blends modestly at street level. As part of a broader revitalization effort for Bilbao and the Basque Country, the Guggenheim made the city a worldwide destination almost immediately upon completion.
New York hardly needs more attractions to make it a destination, yet the High Line landscape is something to behold. Designed by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the High Line operates as both a functional green space and public art. Built on what was once a 1.45-mile elevated freight railway running through Manhattan's West Side meatpacking district, the line has been reimagined as far more than a park. It is a walkway removed from traffic, housing native plantings, seating, rotating public art installations, and compelling spaces like the 10th Avenue Square at 17th Street.
The 10th Avenue Square is essentially tiered seating positioned directly above moving traffic, with a focal point on the street below. Two audiences inhabit this ongoing performance: those seated above, watching the city rush past, and those on the street below, looking up — separated by a floor-to-ceiling glass wall. Being on the High Line side is like briefly stopping time while watching the rest of the world, ant-like, scurry beneath you.
A project like this takes years to realize and requires sustained support from both the city and private donors. Without the advocacy of Friends of the High Line, this old railway would have been demolished. Today it serves as a serene walkway for commuters and visitors alike, a habitat for birds and butterflies, and a destination for those drawn to art and nature. The reimagined High Line has also begun revitalizing the neighborhoods in its orbit.
Sometimes art is not the object made, but the ability to recognize the things that already surround us as art. Hiroyuki Shinohara is a Japanese architect who conducted a study on bicycle street vendors in China, writing about the ingenious designs of their bikes and how these vendors help "animate" parts of the city through human interaction. During urban planning and development, buildings are erected, streets rerouted, and public art installed — but the human element can be overlooked. The simple act of buying food from a cart can reconnect us to some of the most basic necessities of life: food, shelter, warmth, and social interaction.
The public art and architecture that reshape our environment pass through a complex process of design, evaluation, funding, and execution. In the end, we as citizens and pedestrians have to live with it. In contemplating the value of that process, one thing is clear: society needs the arts to reflect who we are and where we have come from. Without that intellectual and aesthetic mirror, we risk becoming complacent in the tedium of the mundane — content to live in a vacuum of stale ideas.
Sources
Dale Chihuly — Chihuly Bridge of Glass, Tacoma, WA
"Bridge of Glass." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, last modified 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_of_Glass.
"Chihuly Bridge of Glass." Museum of Glass, Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA, https://www.museumofglass.org/visit.
Norie Sato — Seattle Central Link Light Rail
Upchurch, Michael. "Longtime Light-Rail Artist Norie Sato Is 'Curator' of Link Station Art." The Seattle Times, The Seattle Times Company, July 12, 2009, https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/longtime-light-rail-artist-norie-sato-is-curator-of-link-station-art/.
"Norie Sato." Artist Trust, Artist Trust, https://artisttrust.org/artists/norie-sato/.
Jaume Plensa — Crown Fountain, Millennium Park, Chicago
"Crown Fountain in Millennium Park." City of Chicago, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/chicago_s_publicartcrownfountaininmillenniumpark.html.
Plensa, Jaume. "Crown Fountain, 2004." Jaume Plensa Official Website, https://jaumeplensa.com/works-and-projects/public-space/the-crown-fountain-2004.
Mark Dion — Neukom Vivarium, Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle
"Neukom Vivarium." Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, https://art.seattleartmuseum.org/objects/32046/neukom-vivarium.
"Mark Dion: Neukom Vivarium." Art21, Art21 Inc., https://art21.org/read/mark-dion-neukom-vivarium/.
Tadashi Kawamata — Toronto Project, 1989
"Kawamata: Toronto Project 1989." Mercer Union, Mercer Union: A Centre for Contemporary Visual Art, https://www.mercerunion.org/exhibitions/toronto-project-1989-drawings-and-maquettes-in-the-gallery-outdoor-installation-august-and-september/.
"Tadashi Kawamata." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, last modified 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadashi_Kawamata.
Fallen Fruit — Public Fruit Tree Adoptions, Los Angeles
"About." Fallen Fruit, Fallen Fruit, https://fallenfruit.org/about/.
"The Fruit of Experience." Art21 Magazine, Art21 Inc., Jan. 28, 2010, https://magazine.art21.org/2010/01/28/gastro-vision-the-fruit-of-experience/.
Frank Gehry — Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain
"The Building." Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/the-building.
"Guggenheim Museum Bilbao." Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Guggenheim-Museum-Bilbao.
James Corner Field Operations & Diller Scofidio + Renfro — The High Line, New York
"History." The High Line, Friends of the High Line, https://www.thehighline.org/history/.
"The High Line." Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Diller Scofidio + Renfro,https://dsrny.com/project/the-high-line.
Beyond Social Media: Arts Education as an Antidote to the Anxious Generation
A Watershed Moment
In December 2025, Australia became the first country to ban social media use by youth under 16. Why? For the health and safety of approximately five million kids whose childhoods were being used by tech companies as a grand social experiment. Globally, instead of building critical skills during crucial developmental stages, children have been provided with platforms that can cause addiction, stunt emotional growth and physical abilities, and in some cases, lead to premature death. At Minds Beyond Measure, we believe the antidote is prioritizing a real-world based lifestyle for youth with focused engagement through art-centered curricula that addresses the perceived benefits they seek in social media: connection, community, learning, and inspiration.
The Growing Crisis: What Research Tells Us About Social Media and Youth Mental Health
Mark Zuckerberg created FaceMash in 2003 to rate women on his college campus, even comparing them with animals. That troubling origin story launched a social media empire including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Those foundations endure today with sexist content from influencers like Andrew Tate and a feedback loop of objectification and comparison. Social media was designed primarily by privileged young white men to exploit vulnerabilities in human psychology, becoming an invasive weed freeloading our headspace and profiting from our screen time.
The original age limit for accessing social media (13) was set by the 1998 US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with developmental stages or harmful content. Youth work on these skills during critical growth periods: trust and attachment in infancy, autonomy and confidence in toddlerhood, initiative and cooperation in preschool, competence and social skills in middle childhood, and identity formation and emotional regulation in adolescence. Social media interferes with this critical development by delaying motor and language skills in early childhood, replacing genuine skill-building with artificial achievement in middle childhood, and hijacking identity formation with external validation during adolescence—a sensitive period when the brain is most vulnerable.
According to Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, the surge in youth anxiety and depression started around 2010 with smartphones providing continuous social media access. While social media addiction isn't in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) yet, research shows problematic use includes depression, anxiety, body image issues, and sleep disruption. WHO data shows problematic social media use among adolescents increased from 7% in 2018 to 11% in 2022—a 5% jump in just four years. Even the U.S. Surgeon General's advisory states they cannot conclude social media is "sufficiently safe" for children.
The Adolescent Brain's Unique Vulnerability
What researchers like Haidt are finding out is that social media rewires users' brains. Where, exactly, are the young social media users going to have their brains rewired? For ages 5–7, common platforms include TikTok, YouTube, Roblox, and Minecraft. Ages 8–12 use TikTok, YouTube, Roblox, and WhatsApp. Ages 13–17 prefer TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. Knowing that there are now links between social media and mental health issues, imagine what's happening to teen brains consuming an average of 4.8 hours of social media daily, according to a 2023 Gallup poll!
The teen years are particularly problematic for social media use because of asynchronous brain development—different regions maturing at different rates. During adolescence (ages 10-24), there's a dramatic mismatch: the limbic system (emotions, reward center, fear responses) develops early while the prefrontal cortex (impulse control, planning, judgment, emotional regulation) doesn't fully mature until the mid-20s.
The U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 Advisory states: "Adolescence is a vulnerable period of brain development...when identities and sense of self-worth are forming, brain development is especially susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions, and peer comparison." Social media delivers constant, unpredictable social feedback precisely when the adolescent brain's reward system is most reactive but executive control is least developed. Research from UNC-Chapel Hill found that adolescents who checked social media frequently (15+ times daily) showed distinct changes in brain regions processing social rewards and punishments, becoming "hypersensitive to feedback from their peers."
This vulnerability explains Sean Parker's confession about Facebook's design. The former Facebook president told Axios in 2017: "How do we consume as much of your time...? Give you a little dopamine hit...It's a social-validation feedback loop...exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology."
Policy Responses: A Global Reckoning
Australia's social media ban has taken effect, and the world is watching. Other countries considering similar measures include the US, UK, Norway, and France. In the U.S., Florida has signed a ban for some platforms for younger children, while California and New York focus on addictive feeds, though they face First Amendment challenges.
As any parent knows, bans alone aren't the answer. They don't address underlying desires kids seek in social media (connection, self-expression, community) by providing healthy alternatives. That's where the arts come in.
Minds Beyond Measure's Real World Findings
In preliminary findings from a 2026 Minds Beyond Measure exploratory survey of youth ages 13–24, we found 80% of respondents started social media use at age 13. While Instagram and YouTube were most common, 60% encountered inappropriate content or unwelcome interactions from strangers. And, the majority of youth spent approximately 2–4 hours on social media during weekdays and weekends. For youth clocking in 4 hour social media weekdays, it's the equivalent of a part-time job.
Most participants recognized social media's harms: shortened attention span, time away from real-world activities, distraction from feelings, harmful content, and anxiety. The top benefits they reported were building connection and community, learning, and inspiration. When asked about real-world creative activities they participated in that provided similar benefits, the top answers were music, baking, and real-world games. One respondent reported, "Playing with other musicians is almost like having a musical conversation."
Implementing the Arts as a Solution
"These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability," states the Surgeon General. The good news? Thanks to neuroscience, we know brains can be rewired. While we await science-based health restrictions and mandatory policies around social media use, we can start the rewiring process by bringing kids back to physical, play-based childhoods by leveraging the arts (a research backed alternative).
According to Haidt, the main issue is "overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world." While limiting digital exposure is important, schools and families can help youth by providing creative outlets that allow them the freedom to explore, question, and create.
Gertrude Stein said, "Anything one does every day is important and imposing." What if time spent on social media was instead used to create? In Imagination: A Manifesto, Ruha Benjamin discusses "radical imagination" as a powerful tool for understanding and shaping ourselves and creating culture. We're at a critical time as we watch the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world create virtual spaces scripted by a one-sided past of colonialism, sexism, ableism, white supremacy, and nationalism. Creativity and the arts are crucial for youth—especially in underserved communities—to develop the critical thinking and social and emotional skills necessary to create what Benjamin describes as an imaginary: "a desirable and feasible future."
The Big Swap: What Kids Want from Social Media vs. What They Can Find in Arts Education
As we limit harmful digital exposure, we must simultaneously expand access to arts education. The goal isn't just reducing screen time—it's giving young people richer, more meaningful ways to express themselves, connect with others, and develop resilience. The arts aren't a luxury; they're a necessity for mental health in a digital age.
These are examples of benefits/rewards youth are looking to social media for, and how they can be found while accessing the arts:
1. Connection & Community Social Media: Connecting with like-minded individuals, interest-based communities, maintaining friendships across distances. Arts Alternative: Theater troupes, orchestras, dance companies, and art collectives create genuine bonds through face-to-face interaction. Regular rehearsals build sustained real-world connections that provide stronger peer support than online interactions. Mental health benefit: Addresses isolation while developing vital social skills.
2. Self-Expression & Identity Exploration Social Media: Showcasing identity, trying different personas, getting feedback. Arts Alternative: Acting allows trying on identities in safe contexts; visual arts and music provide outlets for expressing emotions; creative work allows identity experimentation without digital permanence or algorithmic judgment. Mental health benefit: Safe emotional expression during vulnerable developmental periods without social comparison traps.
3. Creative Outlet & Skill Development Social Media: Creating content, learning through tutorials, sharing work. Arts Alternative: Direct skill-building develops genuine competence through expert instruction and structured feedback, creating tangible work with intrinsic value beyond likes. Mental health benefit: Mastering skills triggers natural dopamine release without artificial manipulation, while improved academic performance extends benefits beyond the arts.
4. Support & Reduced Isolation Social Media: Support groups, connecting with others facing similar challenges. Arts Alternative: Arts communities welcome marginalized individuals, creating inclusive spaces where difference is celebrated. The creative process itself can be therapeutic, with activities like choir singing and art-making reducing mental distress and anxiety. Mental health benefit: Real-world belonging without the drama, FOMO, and constant comparison that overwhelm 45% of teens.
5. Confidence & Self-Esteem Social Media: Positive feedback through likes/comments, recognition for content. Arts Alternative: Mastery builds genuine competence; performance provides validation based on achievement, not appearance; overcoming creative challenges builds resilience. Mental health benefit: Authentic achievement creates stable self-worth, unlike the fragile self-esteem built on likes that makes 46% of adolescents feel worse about their body image.
6. Cultural Awareness & Empathy Social Media: Exposure to diverse perspectives, global issues, different cultures. Arts Alternative: Theater, music, and visual arts from different cultures provide deep engagement with diverse perspectives; playing characters develops empathy; collaborative arts require understanding others' viewpoints in real time. Mental health benefit: Genuine empathy and cultural understanding build social-emotional competence.
Conclusion
The evidence is clear: social media exploits adolescent brain development at its most vulnerable stage, hijacking the reward system while regulatory controls are still under construction. But we're not powerless. By expanding access to arts education, we can provide young people with the connection, creativity, community, and skill-building they're seeking—without the mental health costs. This isn't about demonizing technology; it's about protecting childhood and giving our youth the tools to become empowered creators of culture rather than passive consumers of algorithmically-curated content. The arts offer a research-backed pathway forward, one that builds resilience, authentic self-worth, and the real-world relationships essential for healthy development. At Minds Beyond Measure, we're committed to making this vision a reality.
If you want to learn more about the history of drumming and are curious about how Minds Beyond Measure provides music as an antidote to social media, check out the article "International Drum Month" by Lauren Perl or visit this page.
Sources
Australia Social Media Ban:
● UNICEF Australia: Social Media Ban Explainer
● eSafety Commissioner: Social Media Age Restrictions
● NPR: Social Media Ban for Children Under 16 Starts in Australia
FaceMash/Facebook Origins:
● The Harvard Crimson: Hot or Not? Website Briefly Judges Looks (2003)
● Wikipedia: History of Facebook
Sean Parker & Addictive Design:
● Axios: Sean Parker - Facebook Was Designed to Exploit Human 'Vulnerability'
● CBS News: Sean Parker - Facebook Takes Advantage of 'Vulnerability in Human Psychology'
Social Media Usage Statistics:
● Gallup: Teens Spend Average of 4.8 Hours on Social Media Per Day (2023)
Mental Health Research:
● WHO Europe: Teens, Screens and Mental Health (2024)
● U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory: Social Media and Youth Mental Health (2023)
Brain Development Research:
● PMC: Brain Development During Adolescence - Neuroscientific Insights
● Nature Communications: Media Use and Brain Development During Adolescence
Books:
● Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press, 2024.
● Benjamin, Ruha. Imagination: A Manifesto. W.W. Norton & Company, 2024.
If you want to learn more about the history of drumming and are curious about how Minds Beyond Measure provides music as an antidote to social media, check out the article “International Drum Month” by Lauren Perl or visit this page.
Tia Factor
Artist, Curator
Originally published in Arts Interviews, April 2010
Tia Factor is a Portland-based artist and curator. She received her M.F.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2001 and her B.F.A. from the California College of the Arts in 1997. Factor has taught at the Oxbow School in Napa, California; the Department of Art Practice at the University of California at Berkeley; Portland State University; and Portland Community College. In this interview, she shares how her roots — stretching from a rural region of Northern California to the suburbs of Chicago — along with her experiences traveling nationally and internationally, inform her art.
LN: Your paintings have a very relevant feel in relation to contemporary art sensibilities. They incorporate complex color schemes, combining biomorphic and geometric forms to create almost musical, fragmented, frenetic compositions that suggest real or imagined places and times. What is the significance of landscape in your art?
TF: There are a lot of reasons I'm interested in landscape and place. I was born in a beautiful, semi-remote backwater of Northern California — the Russian River area in Sonoma County. My parents and I lived up on a hill in the redwoods, living close to the land. When my folks split up, my mom and I ended up in suburban Chicago, where I was raised from the age of eight. I had a pretty rough time of it in the suburbs, feeling alienated from my surroundings — the sprawl and rampant development of that landscape. As soon as I could, I graduated early from high school and moved back to Sonoma County, where my dad lived. I had the distinct impression of coming back to myself, of finally being allowed to express who I was. The place had so much to do with it. I realized through that experience that everyone is far more affected by the quality of their surroundings than they think. Once I began exploring how I was so profoundly affected — both negatively and positively — by my surroundings, I dove further into the study of geography, wanting to create images dealing with landscape and the effect it has on people.
LN: You recently created a whole series of paintings based on your move from California to Portland. This seems to have been an important life transition to have spawned this project, which also has a social practice component. Can you talk about your process in developing it?
TF: Moving to Portland was a pretty intense transition for a number of reasons. I went to school — both undergrad and graduate — in the Bay Area, and nearly every friendship and professional contact I had made in the previous twelve years was there. Though my husband and I bought a house in Portland, it just didn't feel like home even after we filled it with all of our things. I wasn't sure how Portland could become home.
We had actually just come from living in Tasmania for close to half a year, and because that was clearly a temporary situation, I retained that privileged sense of being a visitor — not needing to create a real sense of home in a foreign land. But Portland was different.
So, I created a project for myself that grew out of something I had just completed during a residency in Tasmania. As part of that residency, I was housed for a month on the outskirts of a prison ruin. I was seriously lonely, but I developed a project that helped remedy that. Each morning, I would walk around the ruins asking tourists about their personal impressions of the place. It helped me feel connected to humanity and the world again. And I found — just as this interview requires me to clarify my own thought process, which feels good — that people liked being invited to answer questions. They liked participating in someone's project, knowing that what they said might generate a work of art. That was the beginning of a more social side to my practice as a painter.
After moving to Portland, I decided to ask the few friends I had here about how they had made the city their home through a formal recorded interview process. I took pictures of things they brought up during the interviews and arranged those images into compositions, which I then painted with gouache on paper. I sometimes refer to these paintings as symbolic portraits, or mental maps of my subjects. I'm not sure if it was the effectiveness of this project, having a baby in Portland, being here for over two years, or some combination of all of the above, but I've finally begun to feel a lot more at home here.
LN: Your paintings combine a beautiful mixture of abstract forms with realistic elements such as building structures, trees, and animals. There is also a fine balance between control and chaos in your use of materials. Can you talk about the development of your techniques and imagery?
TF: This combination of abstract and realistic elements is how I represent place from the vantage point of both inner and outer experience — a fusion of subjective, personal, or emotional reality with the environments surrounding us. I am also interested in the tension between control and chaos. Throughout my practice, I've explored the idea of order emerging from chaos and our basic human need to find patterns and meaning in chaotic information. I love the exchange between organic, amorphous patterns and the harder edges of architectural and geometric forms. In my paintings, this often results in pools of gouache or watercolor drying in naturally formed patterns, juxtaposed with harder-edged, refined mark-making.
In terms of imagery, I frequently return to these themes: chaos and order, nature and the built environment, and the interconnectedness of human beings with their surroundings.
LN: You have been awarded artist residencies in India, Vermont, and Tasmania. You touched on your experience in Tasmania — how do residencies and travel influence your art?
TF: Travel has been a very important element in my life generally, and as an artist specifically. I seem to be most open to experience when I travel, learning the most about the world and myself in relation to it. When I travel, I try to make art, even when the conditions aren't ideal. When I learned about residencies, I couldn't believe that such a perfect fusion of what I love most — travel and art-making — existed.
I didn't necessarily make my best work at any of those residencies, but I don't think that's what they're about. The effect those experiences have had on who I am will always contribute to what I make as an artist and will continue to deepen my understanding of and curiosity about this world. And there is always something wonderful about being given a studio space and meeting other artists in a foreign land — or even Vermont!
LN: In addition to being an artist, you have done curatorial work. What has been your favorite curatorial experience?
TF: Curating has never come easily to me — it requires a lot of coordinating and communicating with many people, which is not my preferred way to spend my time. That said, I am currently organizing a group show of contemporary art from Tasmania, which will open in Portland at Gallery Homeland in a year. While I'm genuinely excited about it and glad it's happening, I feel the weight of being responsible for art being shipped from Australia to the U.S. — and of trying to make everyone involved happy with the results. It's easy to get excited about an idea for a show. Making it real is another matter entirely.
LN: What projects are currently in the works?
TF: I currently have a solo show, Places We Call Home, at Swarm Gallery in Oakland, California. For that show, I began a series called Pocket Canyon, which explores the place I was born in rural Northern California. I've completed four paintings for that series so far and have begun another. I'm certain there will be more; I'm only just beginning to come to terms with that place I no longer call home.
Tia Factor is represented by Swarm Gallery, Oakland, CA.