The Memory of Glass
2020-22
Proprietary electronics, existing architecture
dimensions variable
Part of DAVID WALLACE HASKINS: LANDSCAPE + LIGHT
November 2021 - March 2023
Edith Farnsworth House
Plano, IL
An immersive architectural intervention in Mies van der Rohe’s iconic glass home, the Edith Farnsworth House— installed by Haskins during his 2022 artist residency.
Building on the recent scientific discovery that glass retains memory, Haskins’s work envisions the glass walls of the house as hearing and remembering the varied soundscape that has filled and surrounded it over the last 70+ years across the 60 acres of woods and farmland that it sits on.
Haskins has engineered a way for these memories to emanate from the house itself, allowing the 12 large windows of the house to become 12 glass speakers sending sonic imagery both outward into the terrain and inward into the home. As visitors walk towards the house they will hear this storied soundscape swirling with the one already in their midst, merging the past with the present and the interior with exterior.
Walking into the home will immerse the listener in 12 unique channels of sound that the artist gathered through archives as well as his field recordings across the property over the last few years, such as birdsong, crickets, bald eagles, egrets, owls, coyotes, traffic, even a flood gurgling up the side of the house, people enjoying an evening party, a violinist (presumably Edith) practicing her favorite piece of music during a thunderstorm, Mies conversing about his work, Lord Palumbo sharing his favorite music to play in the house and telling stories about how he met Mies and came to own the house after Edith. The work allows the adage “if these walls could speak" to be realized, enabling the house to tell its own story.
As an architect, Mies was interested in visually blurring the line between the indoors and outdoors, which he most effectively realized with the Edith Farnsworth House. With The Memory of Glass Haskins pushes the idea further—the soundscape moves right through the house, from the outside in and the inside out, allowing the architecture to finally become fully transparent—aurally as well as visually, further dissolving the boundary between the interior and exterior world.
Image Continuous
2010-21
From the Skycube series
Pyrolytic coated glass, aluminum
96 x 96 x 96 in. (244 x 244 x 244 cm)
Part of DAVID WALLACE HASKINS: LANDSCAPE + LIGHT
November 2021 - December 2024
Edith Farnsworth House
Plano, IL
(available for purchase or commission at any size)
Video 1
Video 2
Press
This site-responsive glass sculpture invites us to slow down as we witness the landscape and light unfolding in subtle and quieting ways. It shifts us from spectator to participant as our movement transforms the composition, revealing the three-dimensional presence of the sky held in the earth.
We tend to ignore the sky as it enwraps the landscape, but with Image Continuous, the dynamic is reversed—the landscape enwraps the sky, giving it shape and form. Here we can approach the sky on foot, coming face to face with it in a very physical and personal way.
Haskins reminds us, “The sky, or troposphere, starts at the ground and rises 10 miles high. It’s the part of nature we are most intimately related to, yet we often forget we are living and breathing in it everyday. My hope is that in encountering its quiet pace and presence, we might begin to learn from it, and rest back into our own unfolding.”
Background and Construction
Image Continuous is the fourth in a series of Skycubes that Haskins has installed in the US, and the second to sit in conversation with one of Mies van der Rohe’s homes—the first being Skycube, (2010-15) located outside the McCormick House at Elmhurst Art Museum and made from the same glass and white-painted steel used in the home.
For Edith Farnsworth House, Haskins created his first glass Skycube, paying homage to Mies, who pioneered the glass house and the glass skyscraper from 1945 to 1951. Using 1 ton of skyscraper glass, half the amount used in Edith’s home, Haskins developed a very particular reflectivity, giving the sculpture its mysterious presence and enabling it to externally reflect the sky and its surroundings while internally absorbing light, allowing its lateral reflections to recede into a dark void—a common tension in Haskins’s work.
The title, Image Continuous, was found by the artist in “The Quality is Lent”, a surprisingly apt poem written by Edith Farnsworth in one of her journals, excerpted below:
The quality of light is lent
A wave-like incidence
– Image continuous.
Warm-brown timbered flesh is bent
– In shadow shivering –
Dense fibrous sinuous
Sky reflection interlace…
Silence on mirrored interface
Reflects the limpid notes,
Resounds in sun-lit glade.
Image Continuous opened to the public on Edith’s birthday, November 17, 2021, on the rededication and 70th anniversary of the house where it was renamed the Edith Farnsworth House.
Stone Landing
2022
From the Stone Kōan series
Original travertine from the Edith Farnsworth House
Sapele bench, stereo-tuned tubular aluminum bells,
dimensions variable
Part of DAVID WALLACE HASKINS: LANDSCAPE + LIGHT
November 2021 - December 2024
Edith Farnsworth House
Plano, IL
(available for purchase)
Video
A new installation on the grounds of the Edith Farnsworth House leads visitors to an expansive view of the Fox River diverging around an easterly island. This picturesque location was one of the artist’s favorite places to spend time watching the crane and great egret do their fishing during his residency. Here, Haskins placed his largest meditative monolith from his new Stone Kōan series. The sculpture was created from the original travertine landing stone that was the final step to the upper terrace of the Edith Farnsworth House from 1951-2021 (*see Note below). Haskins also crafted a wooden bench out of sapele wood, to afford visitors a place to rest and take in the quiet view while listening to matched sets of deep-resonating hand-tuned tubular bells which he hung in the trees on each side of the bench. As the breeze comes in off the river it activates the bells, creating a harmonious stereo hum that encourages all to linger.
*Note: Last year the travertine stone that had been part of the house's lower terrace for 70 years was removed and replaced due to severe weathering. Haskins was able to use this original stone, which Mies personally selected for the house, to create a new sculpture series which is on view and for sale in the visitor center to help support future renovations. To purchase this particular sculpture or for more info on purchasing one of the smaller versions please send an email to: info@dwhstudio.com.
Stone Kōan Sculpture Series
2021-22
Original Italian travertine stone from
Mies van der Rohe’s Edith Farnsworth House
dimensions variable
(available for purchase, contact: CHeidrich@savingplaces.org)
Storied Stone
Each of these stone sculptures are made from the original Italian travertine pavers that architect Mies van der Rohe personally selected to have installed on the lower terrace of the iconic glass home he designed and built for Dr. Edith Farnsworth from 1945-1951. In 2021, after 70 years of ice damage, these historic pavers had to be removed and replaced, enabling Edith Farnsworth House 2022 artist-in-residence, David Wallace Haskins, to use them for a new sculpture series, the sale of which will help raise support for the continued restoration of the house’s upper terrace in the years to come.
It is fitting for a home that sits on a river that these travertine stones were themselves formed by water. The ancient mineral springs at Bagni di Tivoli have been bubbling up rich minerals for over 200,000 years, fueled by the same geothermal heat as Mt. Vesuvius and the Roman baths. This is what gives the stone its porous structure, revealed in its various chips, divots, and cavities giving it the charming irregularities that have drawn architects to use it for centuries. In fact, this stone that Mies chose for Dr. Farnsworth’s home came from the same travertine quarry that was used to build some of the greatest architectural marvels of the ancient world—including the Roman Colosseum, aqueducts, and the Pantheon. Michelangelo even chose this storied stone for key portions of St. Peter’s Basilica. Along with their distinctive texture, these sculptures share a unique patina, having been exposed to over seven decades of sun and weather since the house was first built—and on their back and sides, one can see the remnants of the cement that once held them to the house itself.
Inspiration and Background
A kōan, which is pronounced “koe-on”, is a confounding story, question, or phrase used in Zen practice to help an initiate abandon their reliance on binary logic in order to provoke “the great doubt”—a state of unknowing that allows for a more expansive or intuitive knowing to arise.
Many of Haskins‘ works could be considered experiential kōans, as they use a phenomenal paradox to create unique perceptual tensions that lead viewers into a questioning or an unknowing, which the artist refers to as “a disorientation that leads to a reorientation". Haskins’ hope is that this process might widen the ways in which one begins to see and respond to themselves and the world around them.
To achieve this perceptual tension Haskins implements a blend of meticulous geometry, advanced engineering, and archetypal symbolism. The ancient iconography of the oldest traditions around the world have used rectilinear forms to symbolize the realm of knowing, or the physical and the finite. This has often been contrasted alongside voids or circles which have symbolized the realm of unknowing, or the immaterial and infinite.
Building on these traditions, Haskins’ Stone Kōans are composed of rectilinear forms that each hold an immaterial void at their center. The stones have been cut in such a way that this void appears as a visual paradox—both empty and full, as foreground and background seemingly coalesce on the same plane. Absence folds into presence, allowing what is behind the sculpture to merge with what is before it, condensing opposites into a kind of oneness.
In this way, these sculptures function less as aesthetic objects, and more as meditation stones, or, as their name suggests, tools that can be used to stimulate contemplation and to practice what Haskins calls a “third kind of seeing, one that transcends reactive binary thinking, to make room for a nondual interrelational beholding.”
Placement
These sculptures are incredibly site-responsive and work best set on a ledge or mantel, 4-6 inches from a plain wall near a well-lit window, or anywhere outdoors. The opening in each stone functions, and even strangely appears, as a lens, catching and framing the light and shadow that moves and shifts before and behind the sculpture throughout the day and evening. Depending on the light source, placement, and the viewer’s position, the void might appear to be as solid as the stone itself and moments later take on the appearance of a sphere with true depth and form (as seen in the pictures above). This interplay with light, space, and time, and positional perspective, is a common theme in Haskins’ practice and affords the viewer a work of ever-changing phenomena to behold for years to come.
Truth of Skies
2023
Digital photography series
Click here for the complete set of images
Haskins's Skywall and Skycube series were born from a practice of looking up and beholding the wonder and beauty of the sky each day. To celebrate his newest Skycube, Image Continuous, Haskins curated a series of original photographs entitled Truth Of Skies, which were taken from his contemplations of the sky over the last few years as he prepared and developed his exhibition Landscape + Light for his residency at the Edith Farnsworth House. The title of the series was taken from the 1843 essay “Of Truth of Skies”, by John Ruskin, excerpted below:
"It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.
... there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory… And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly.
The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel them if he be always with them: but,
THE SKY is for all;
bright as it is, it is not “too bright, nor good, for human nature’s daily food;” it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity…
And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought…
Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south and smote upon their summits until they melted and moldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed, unregretted as unseen.”
—
If you might be interested in a small signed print of one of these images or would be interested in receiving the entire series, please email us: info@dwhstudio.com.
Landscape + Light has been extended through May at the Edith Farnsworth House
Atma
2022
From the Skywall series
Dedicated to Matthew J. Larson
Pyrolytic coated glass, mirrored glass, wood
Dimensions variable
Part of Here After, at Bridge Projects
Los Angeles, CA
Video 1: parallax with clouds
Video 2: time-lapse of the sun movement
Atma was an architectural intervention that invited viewers into a dynamic relationship with the sky, themselves, as well as the interior gallery and its exterior architecture. The title comes from the Sanskrit word for essence, breath, soul, or self. The work became a threshold or doorway between worlds where the viewer experienced their own body transfigured in light. Throughout the day the light of the sky would circumscribe the gallery from ceiling to wall to floor, like an ancient zenith tube moving horizontally through space revealing multiple circles of warm light until they converged and disappeared. In this way, the work became three-dimensional and multi-sensorial, both looking out into the infinite expanse, (a view that shifted with one’s position in space), while also reaching inside the gallery physically warming and drawing visitors to the threshold of its presence.
Curatorial Notes
Breath
2019
4.12-channel stereo sound installation,
infrasonic subwoofers, and full-range speakers
Chicago Sound Show
University of Chicago
Video
Book
Breath was an architectural sound work for both hearing and deaf visitors that was channelled through Cobb Gate, the landmark entrance to the University of Chicago's Main Quad. The work uncovered the often unnoticed layers of sound moving through the campus each day, offering those passing through an opportunity to relax on the benches inside and physically experience this hidden soundscape.
Composed of the university’s interior and exterior sounds, from individual heartbeats and handwriting to songbirds and buses, the work was woven together and carried by the deep breathing 32 foot pipes of the E.M. Skinner Organ at Rockefeller Chapel.
The composition played from 9am-9pm every day with the organ crescendo happening during the last 8 minutes of every hour.
Skycube
2010-15
From the Skycube series
Steel, glass, far infrared light film, limestone bench
96 x 96 x 96 in. (244 x 244 x 244 cm)
17 x 17 x 48 in. (43 x 43 x 122 cm)
Elmhurst Art Museum
Permanent Collection
Bridging architecture, sculpture, and painting Skycube brings the full vertical dimension of the sky down to the horizontal space in which we live. Seen at eye level through a square aperture cut into 6,000 pounds of steel, the moving image of the sky is not a digital projection or display, it is the actual three-dimensional sky brought to the pictorial plane.
During the day, atmospheric changes move across Skycube's exterior like a living painting continually recreating itself. Walking up to the work reveals an interior 8 x 8 foot wall appearing as an immersive three-dimensional mural of the sky. Looking down into the cube reveals a framed portrait of the self in the sky.
In the evening, Skycube moves through endless hues of blue until a deep black square emerges, slowly revealing a composition of moving stars and planets.
—
Skycube sits in conversation with Mies van der Rohe’s McCormick House at Elmhurst Art Museum and is made from the same dimensions and materials of glass, steel, and white Tnemec paint. Mies was famous for creating the first glass Skyscraper that brought Americans into the sky to live and work. Here Haskins reverses the dynamic and brings the sky down to what is perhaps Mies’ most grounded structure, his one-story glass house.
—
"Infinite and immeasurable in depth. It is a painting of air, something into which you can see, through the parts which are near you, into those which are far off; something which has no surface and through which we can plunge far and farther, and without stay or end, into the profundity of space."
John Ruskin
—
GALLERY AND PRESS:
Skycube Tour with Time-Lapse Video
ESSAYS:
The Condescension of Light
Daniel S. Robinson, Historian of Philosophy
Regaining Our Balance
E. Paul Holmes, Psychologist
Breaking and Swapping Symmetry
James P. Buban, Physicist
Skycube II
2017
From the Skycube series
Aluminum, glass
80 x 80 x 80 in. (203 x 203 x 203 cm)
Palm Springs, California
Private collection
More Pictures
Time lapse video
Ascension / Descension
2018
Glass, aluminum, wood, LEDs, polycarbonate,
and existing architecture
Dimension variable
Part of David Wallace Haskins: POLARITY
Elmhurst Art Museum
September 8, 2018 - January 20, 2019
Ascension / Descension was an architectural intervention of Mies van der Rohe’s McCormick house highlighting Mies’ interplay with the earth and sky, architecture and nature, the ranch house and the skyscraper.
The work employed a single line of light and 3 tons of glass mirror creating an infinite Miesian grid ascending and descending inside the house. Visitors were invited to walk out onto the glass feeling themselves suspended between the endlessly repeating layers of sky and earth, putting Mies' one-story glass house in conversation with the skyscrapers that made him a modern icon.
—
Background:
The McCormick House’s concept of parallel glass walls bookended in brick was actually the initial design intended for Mies van der Rohe’s first high-rise, the Promontory Apartments in Hyde Park, Chicago. Had this happened this design would have been famous for being the worlds first glass skyscraper, but it was rejected and in 1949 they built a concrete high-rise instead. The success of the Promontory Apartments offered Mies the opportunity in 1951 to finally build the world's first glass skyscrapers, the 860/880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, to much acclaim.
The following year, 1952 Mies returned to his original high-rise concept of parallel glass walls bookended in brick but this time he developed them into a single story ranch home for Robert McCormick. What initially began as the aesthetic vision for Mies’ tallest building and world’s first glass skyscraper, essentially became his lowest structure, a modular glass home for the average American family.
Mies glass and steel skyscrapers made him a household name and forever changed the landscape of the modern city. They brought Americans up into the sky, allowing them to live and work in light filled spaces surrounded by clouds.
In 2015 when Haskins was invited to create a site-specific sculpture outside the Mccormick House, it seemed fitting then for him to reverse the narrative and bring the sky down to Mies’ single story glass house, which he did with Skycube.
Then in 2018, after the Mccormick House was renovated, Haskins was commissioned to return again and developed an architectural intervention inside the house that would coincide with his solo exhibition Polarity and celebrate the history of the house. Ascension / Descension continued the initial conversation he began with Skycube, this time bringing the sky down into the house itself, reconnecting its walls of glass and brick to Mies’ original vision, letting them finally stack endlessly into the sky as he perhaps first imagined.
Time Mirror (Grand Rapids)
2016-21
From the Time Mirror series
HD camera, HD projector, custom software and computer
Dimensions variable
Part of DAVID WALLACE HASKINS: BEING IN TIME
On view September - November, 2021
Studio Park
Grand Rapids, MI
Haskins' latest Time Mirror, a large LED screen reflecting the Studio Park piazza in layers of time, allowing visitors to meet their past self as well as step into their present self, to become fully embodied in time. It also allows visitors to see themselves in third person, as others do. Haskins says, “Seeing the self as “other” opens new doorways of understanding and compassion, revealing the interrelational life we share with ourselves, others and the living world."
Open Skycube
2010-21
From the Skycube series
Pyrolytic coated glass, MDO
93 x 96 x 92 in. (236 x 244 x 233 cm)
Part of DAVID WALLACE HASKINS: BEING IN TIME
On view September - November, 2021
Studio Park, Grand Rapids, MI
Continuing Haskins’ exploration with the sky through his ongoing Skycube series, this work allows visitors to come face to face with the undistorted three-dimensional presence of the sky in a real and embodied way. The viewer also has the opportunity to see themselves in third-person, resting back into the sky, surrounded and held by the very atmosphere that sustains them—highlighting the interdependence they share with the sky every day.
“We only care for things we truly feel connected to,” Haskins says, “it’s understandable why we struggle to care for this world when we live so emotionally disconnected from it. Sensing a deeper connection with the living world means we will more naturally care for it. With my Skycube series, I want to help us connect more deeply with a part of the natural world we constantly rely on but rarely think about. I wanted to bring the visible presence of the sky down, resting on the earth’s surface in a physical, approachable, and relatable way we never experience. I wanted visitors to be able to come face to face with the sky, allowing it look into them as much or more then they were there to look into it.”
Haskins continues, “The sky, or troposphere, starts at the ground level and is the atmosphere that supports all life on this planet. It isn’t some far off place, it’s right here, we live in it. There is no part of the natural world we could be more intimately related to, we quite literally live and work and breath in the sky. It surrounds us and deeply affects each one of us, inwardly and outwardly. And what we do in it everyday deeply affects the sky as well. It’s not a one-way relationship.
Haskins’ Skycube series bridges architecture and sculpture, becoming a living painting as it brings the full vertical dimension of the sky down to the horizontal space in which we live, while also offering an opportunity to contemplate the presence of light and space unfolding in time in quiet and ever-changing ways. In the evening, the work moves through endless hues of blue until a deep black void emerges, slowly revealing a composition of moving stars and planets.
Where we meet
2015-18
4K projection
Duration: 1 hr 30 min
Part of David Wallace Haskins: POLARITY
Elmhurst Art Museum
September 8, 2018 - January 20, 2019
A silent immersive film showing groups of individuals of different ages and backgrounds walking towards the viewer from an infinite point in the distance until they each arrive full-size on the gallery wall looking directly at the visitor. After some time these individuals turn and walk away, disappearing back in the distance, followed by new individuals walking towards the viewer as the cycle continues.
The film has no projection frame, causing the filmic nature of this work to recede, giving way to a more relational and experiential encounter that is traditionally unknown in this medium. The film also has no horizon line, the sky and earth have been removed, transforming the gallery wall into a void of infinite space that each figure emerges from and returns to.
This slow and silent process creates a space for a relational encounter to unfold as the moving figures activate an unusual anticipation or longing in the viewer, waiting for the figures to arrive and leave again and again. This unusual anticipation and focus on the individual’s coming and going brings particular attention to the phenomena of the human gait and its unique relationship to our individual identity.
The gait becomes a clear signifier of individuality, like a fingerprint or iris, and yet stands apart as the only signifier that cannot be privatized or covered up like fingerprints or eyes can be with gloves and sunglasses. The work uncovers the inherent vulnerability of this unmistakable and yet unmaskable identifier, becoming a silent mediation on our unique movement through space and time, into and out of one another’s lives.
It acknowledges the daily rhythm we are all surrendered to- namely our constant coming and going, from the unknown into the known and back again, and the enigmatic presence and absence, birth and death of strangers, friends and loved ones.
The work affords a safe space to sit with and contemplate these inherent mysteries and a space to experience and meet the inherent potency and presence of the “other” as well as the shape of their absence.
Open Skycube (glass)
2010-22
From the Skycube series
Glass, aluminum
96 x 96 x 96 in. (244 x 244 x 244 cm)
(available for purchase or commission at any size)
Uncertain Horizon
2015-18
Projector, media server, computer, haze
Dimensions variable
Part of the Architecture of Light
at David Wallace Haskins: POLARITY
Elmhurst Art Museum
September 8, 2018 - January 20, 2019
Architecture of Light is a series of
immersive light works that invite visitors
to experience the physical, architectural,
and sculptural presence of light and color.
Void Room
2010-16
Wood, drywall, fabric, light
Total dimensions variable
Installation view: David Wallace Haskins: PRESENCE
at Elmhurst Art Museum, March 5 - May 8, 2016
VIDEO
Void Room is an installation work comprised of an empty gallery holding a towering black monochrome opposite the entrance. The monochrome’s height is the same as gallery’s depth, which compresses the space and dwarfs the viewer. The monochrome is so dark it cannot be visually aprehended, inviting the body to perceive what the eyes cannot. This physical movement into the unknown contains perceptual and phenomenological discoveries that affect visitors' interior and exterior perceptions. What initially appears as a two-dimensional visual work, evolves into a deeply spatial, aural, and tactile experience. Participants encounter a journey from exteriority to interiority, embodiment to disembodiment and back again, offering experiential knowledge of previously held abstract concepts and ideas.
Time Mirror IV
2016-18
From the Time MIrror series
HD camera, HD display, custom software, and computer
Time Mirror IV brings the visitor out of their head and into their body, allowing them to sense how their body moves through, fills, and sculpts space in time with surprising volume and consequence.
It provides the unique sensation of physically experiencing spacetime, reframing the present moment by revealing how it is not so much a “moment" we are striving to find or stay in as it is a kind of flowing stream that we are invited to rest back into.
Architecture of Light
2015-18
Projector, media server, computer, haze
Dimensions variable
Part of the Architecture of Light
at David Wallace Haskins: POLARITY
Elmhurst Art Museum
September 8, 2018 - January 20, 2019
Review by Bianca Bova
Architecture of Light is an ongoing series of
immersive light works that invite visitors
to experience the physical, architectural,
and sculptural presence of light and color.
Summer/Winter
2016
4-channel stereo sound installation, 10 hrs,
Sense of Place at Elmhurst Art Museum
December - February, 2017
Summer/Winter is a 10 hour site-specific sound installation that allows museum visitors during the winter months to hear the sounds of the previous summer as they happened minute by minute, hour for hour, in synch with the present time.
As visitors look out on the winter landscape they can hear sounds of cicadas, rustling maples, lawnmowers, softball games and children playing. Every sound is happening at the time of day that it originally happened but when the earth was on the other side of the sun. As darkness falls earlier and the winter landscape evolves, the contrast between what is seen and heard increases.
The most recent iteration of this work used a recording of the park outside the Elmhurst Art Museum made during museum hours in the summer of 2016. It was played back during the winter months of 2016-17 inside the museum's main gallery which offered visitors panoramic views of the park through its floor to ceiling glass.
Time Mirror III
2015-18
From the Time Mirror series
HD camera, HD projector, custom software and computer
Part of David Wallace Haskins: POLARITY
Elmhurst Art Museum
September 8, 2018 - January 20, 2019
Time Mirror III reveals our past, present, and future selves continuity in time, it serves as a metaphor for the many aspects of our individual identities, demonstrating that our present self is always in conversation and interacting with our past and future selves.
This and another two works in the same series premiered at the same time: Time Mirror II at 150 Media Stream, 150 N. Riverside Plaza in downtown Chicago and Time Spheres, at EXPO Chicago, the international exposition of contemporary art at Navy Pier.
Untitled (Miesian Corner)
2017
Stainless steel, aluminum
54 x 54 x 11 in. (137 x 137 x 23 cm)
Private Collection
A site-responsive wall sculpture that allows viewers to see themselves straight-on from nearly every position in the room, creating an inescapable gaze that follows the viewer's movement through space. It also reflects a non-reversed true image of the self and the surrounding environment, allowing viewers to see themselves in third-person.
The work was cast from the 5-point corner of Mies van der Rohe's last American building, which was seen reflected from multiple angles in the sculpture across the Chicago River on the 26th floor of the Jewelers' Building in Chicago where it was on view as part of The City Beautiful at Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation from January through June 2017.
Time Spheres
2018
Virtual reality headset, spherical 3D camera, custom computer and software
Premiered at EXPO CHICAGO/2018
As an off-site extension of
David Wallace Haskins: POLARITY
Time Spheres uses the medium of VR to bring visitors deeper into reality rather than escape from it. The work offers an opportunity to step into and out of three distinct dimensions of time challenging one’s relationship with their past, present, and future selves. The initial installation integrated the active environment of EXPO Chicago and its visitors while offering the participant an opportunity to slow down and make room for the complexity of the present moment.
Soundcube
2001-16
32-channel sound installation, processor,
hardware, fabric, insulation, wood, carpet, light
144 x 144 x 144 in. (366 x 366 x 366 cm)
Installation view: David Wallace Haskins: PRESENCE
at Elmhurst Art Museum, March 5 - May 8, 2016
Soundcube is a room-sized sound sculpture
that allows spatially-specific sound waves
to travel along the x, y and z axes creating
an immersive three-dimensional sound field
in free air.
By visually removing the sound sources, the
installation enables listeners to experience
sound waves as the physical entities they are,
giving them a presence similar to any other
object in space.
Visitors experience sound moving around them
on all sides and even between them, creating
an altogether unusual sonic awareness resulting
in physiological responses such as ASMR.
Soundcube also acts as a room-sized
instrument allowing compositions to be
written with and for it. Compositions
vary from atmospheric to architectural and
musical, each revealing unique elements of the
everyday soundscape: the biophony (biological
sounds), geophony (geological sounds), and
anthropophony (man-made sounds).
Soundcube compositions that premiered at Presence:
Clicks 2:00 min
Seeming to be physically hitting the ceiling
and walls, landing somewhere between
the sound of rain or fire, insects or plastic.
Walk 1:00 min
Recorded on site, after hours, visitors hear the
presence of the artist walking towards the
Soundcube and then around it, encircling them
and walking away.
Grainstream 4:30 min
Nicholas Cline's meditation on the centuries
old practice of seed-saving and the threats
imposed by patenting seed DNA. Recorded
with ritualistic bells, seeds, and grains. More here.
Creek 2:00 min
A nearby creek, spatially mapped in realtime.
By placing a series of microphones over the creek
bed that matched the alignment of speakers on
the Soundcube floor, the actual spatial presence
of the creek moves across the gallery floor.
Hummingbird 1:00
Visitors experience the sonic presence of a
hummingbird flying around the room.
Cubert 3:00
A musical composition heralding the original digital
sounds of 80's computer games. The work consists
of both individual notes and chords that swirl around
the listener in such a way that they feel they could be
plucked out of the air.
*Some of the compositions written for this series
can also be experience via Myrios, a proprietary
program created to allow any group of
individuals with internet access to sync multiple
mobile devices in the same time and space,
creating the necessary configuration of speakers
needed to experience these multi-channel
composition anywhere.
Skywall
2004-14
From the Skywall series
Steel, aluminum, wood, glass, polycarbonate,
far infrared light film, existing architecture
Total dimensions variable
Z+O Architecture + Interiors
More VIDEO in Gallery below
Bridging sculpture, architecture and painting, a Skywall brings the full vertical dimension of the sky down to the horizontal space in which we live. Skywall: Platytera (Πλατυτέρα) is a permanent site-specific installation built into Z+O Architecture + Interiors' conference room wall. The moving image of the sky is not a digital projection or display, it is the actual three-dimensional sky brought to the pictorial plane.
During the day, atmospheric changes move across the aperture like a living painting continually recreating itself. In the evening Platytera moves through endless hues of blue until a deep black square emerges, slowly revealing a composition of moving stars and planets.
"Infinite and immeasurable in depth. It is a painting of air, something into which you can see, through the parts which are near you, into those which are far off; something which has no surface and through which we can plunge far and farther, and without stay or end, into the profundity of space."
John Ruskin
GALLERY:
Photos and Video: Secondary Phenomena
ESSAYS, INTERVIEW, AND Digital Book:
Daniel S. Robinson, Historian of Philosophy
The Condescension of Light
E. Paul Holmes, Psychologist
Regaining Our Balance
James P. Buban, Physicist
Breaking and Swapping Symmetry
Z+O Interview
Conversation with Daniel J. Simoneit, Principal Architect
Skywall: Platytera E-book Download
August 2014 Grand Opening Info
Mirror Monolith
2010-16
Tempered glass, wood, and controlled lighting
96 x 18 x .5 in. (243.84 x 45.72 x 1.27 cm)
Installation view: David Wallace Haskins: PRESENCE
at Elmhurst Art Museum, March 5 - May 8, 201
Re-interpretting the power and purpose of mirrors, Mirror Monolith embraces the tension between looking at and looking through. It invites visitors to move beyond themselves and into the space of another, highlighting the dialogical nature in which we come to understand our shared existence, offering experiential knowledge of what it's like to look through someone else's eyes, or be in someone else's shoes.
Time Mirror II
2018
From the Time Mirror series
Cameras, custom software and
computer, existing architecture
Premiered at 150 Media Stream
As an off-site extension of
David Wallace Haskins: POLARITY
Extended through December 31, 2019
Time Mirror II is an entirely live site-specific interactive video work that transforms 150 Media Stream into a 150’ digital mirror, reflecting the architecture and its visitors back onto itself, compressed and stretched in time.
Visitors are invited to contend with their singularity and plurality, their internal perception vs. exterior reality, their present self relating with their past and even future self.
The work offers an opportunity to slow down and see oneself moving through different layers of time from a third person point of view. Haskins says, “Seeing the self as “other” opens a doorway of understanding and compassion towards the self and the world at large."
Untitled
2010-
From the Skycube series
Stainless steel, glass
60 x 60 x 60 in. (152 x 152 x 152 cm)
Proposal (available for commission)
Untitled
2017
Oil on HDPE
12 x 12 x 4 in. (30.5 x 30.5 x 10.2 cm)
Private collection
VIDEO
Untitled
2010-
From the Skycube series
Glass, stone, water
96 x 96 x 96 in. (244 x 244 x 244 cm)
Proposal (available for commission)
A transparent all-glass open Skycube floating on a reflective infinity pool. The front appears as a cube of the sky, the back as a cube of water, and the sides reflect the surrounding landscape.
Light Seeing Light
2010
Visible and infrared light, lenses, fabric
Total dimensions variable
This ongoing series of Interactive Light
Sculptures are produced without the use
of computers or animation. A proprietary
method of slowly tuning various optics to
sculpt and manipulate visible and infrared
light is used to allow the light to interact
with itself and the surrounding environment
in both controlled and uncontrolled ways.
The experience of interacting with light
as a living thing offers experiential
knowledge about new aspects of the
phenomenon of light and the physical
connections we share with it.
Video of original studio development (2010)
Sky/Earth
2010-
From the Skycube series
Glass, aluminum
96 x 96 x 96 in. (244 x 244 x 244 cm)
Proposal (available for commission)
An open Skycube made of reflective glass and aluminum. The front appears as a cube full of the sky, the back as a cube full of the earth, and the sides reflect the surrounding landscape.
Time Mirror
2009-16
Projector, camera, computer
Total dimensions variable
Installation view: David Wallace Haskins: PRESENCE
at Elmhurst Art Museum, March 5 - May 8, 2016
VIDEO
Time Mirror allows the visitor to see the self as other, to observe their movement through space and time, in third-person.
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
—
Love After Love
Derek Walcott, Collected Poems, 1948-1984
Myrios
2010-2016
Computer program and mobile devices
Premiered April 1, 2016 at Elmhurst Art Museum
Myrios syncs visitors’ mobile devices together in real-time to create connected fields of light and sound. It serves as a framework that turns mobile devices into speakers and video screens that play audio and/or visual compositions as a group.
Void Mirror
2010-16
Stainless steel, wood, fabric
48 x 48 x 6 in. (121.92 x 121.92 x 15.24 cm)
Installation View: David Wallace Haskins: PRESENCE
at Elmhurst Art Museum, March 5 - May 8, 2016
(available for purchase)
VIDEO
Juxtaposing the complete reflection and complete absorption of light, Void Mirror invites the visitor to ponder the interiority and exteriority of the self, allowing a view of the self as both matter and mystery, reflecting the physical and metaphysical.
Untitled
2010-15
HID light
Part of a series of interactive light and shadow works
Untitled
2010-15
HID light, shadow
Part of a series of interactive light and shadow works
Untitled
2010-15
HID light
Part of a series of interactive light and shadow works
Void Sphere
2010-16
Steel, eps, polyurethane, microfiliments
50 in. (127 cm) Diameter
Installation view: David Wallace Haskins: PRESENCE
at Elmhurst Art Museum, March 5 - May 8, 2016
Void Sphere activates both visual and tactile perceptions. Since its surface cannot be seen by the human eye, it appears to be a 2-dimensional object or hole in space. But as the visitor moves towards the work it appears to undulate and move towards the viewer growing in mass and scale, ultimately inviting the hands to perceive what the eyes cannot, transforming the work from void into volume.
Untitled
2017-
Stainless steel
100 x 360 x 24 in. (254 x 914 x 61 cm)
Proposal
A site-responsive monolith that allows viewers to see themselves straight-on from nearly every position in the park, creating an inescapable gaze that follows the viewer's movement through space. It also reflects a non-reversed true image of the self and the surrounding environment, allowing viewers to see themselves in third person.
Polarity
Solo Exhibition at Elmhurst Art Museum
September 9, 2018, extended through January 20, 2019
“The exhibition by Chicago-based multi-media artist David Wallace Haskins will premiere multiple new projects including an interactive video work and large-scale light installation within the Museum galleries. Haskins will also premiere a site-specific installation in the Museum’s McCormick House designed by Mies van der Rohe, which is the second in a series of transformative architectural interventions.
Two off-site extensions of this exhibition will presented in September: the premiere of Time Mirror II at 150 Media Stream (150 North Riverside Plaza, Chicago) in which Haskins continues his work with perception and time by transforming an immersive media wall into a 150-foot digital mirror; and Haskins’ virtual reality piece Time Spheres presented at EXPO Chicago, the international exposition of contemporary & modern art, at Navy Pier (600 E. Grand Avenue, Chicago) September 27-30, 2018.”
RELATED PROGRAMS
Saturday, October 20, 2018 - 1:30pm
Artist Talk
David Wallace Haskins will give an artist talk about his solo exhibition, as well as architectural intervention, Ascension / Descension.
Free with museum admission or current membership
Untitled
2017-
Acrylic, glass
84 x 84 x 12 in. (213 x 213 x 30.5 cm)
Proposal
Untitled
2015
HID Light projection, shadow
144 x 144 in. (365 x 365 cm)
Part of a series of interactive light and shadow works
Untitled
2010-2012
Cotton matboard, gesso, extruded
polystyrene, natural and fluorescent light
33 x 33 x 7 in. (83.8 x 83.8 x 17.8 cm)
Untitled
2010-15
HID light, shadow
Part of a series of interactive light and shadow works
Presence
Solo exhibition available for travel.
"Radical surprise...audaciously atypical...playfully impossible." -Lori Waxman, Chicago Tribune
Exhibition Program
Response to PRESENCE
Exhibition wall text:
"David Wallace Haskins produces immersive and interactive installations and sculptures that challenge perception. Introducing new ways to physically experience and understand such seemingly ephemeral phenomena as light, space, time and sound, Haskins’ poetic works offer a gentle disorientation that encourages a new awareness of the world around us.
Investigating the boundaries between presence and mystery, light and dark, heaven and earth, body and environment, self and other, interior and exterior, Haskins’ exhibition takes its form as a journey that requires a slower pace, an openness to uncertainty and a shedding of preconceived notions of how we perceive or name things we encounter. The sequence of works provides opportunities to experience light as a physical object, sound as a spatial presence, void as volume and time as something visible. The artist invites you to 'move outside of your history, the way you typically make sense of things, and allow a moment of vertigo... to find a new footing and ultimately enter into a kind of beholding that transcends language and thought.'
In addition to artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, René Magritte, Yves Klein and James Turrell, Haskins draws inspiration from other disciplines like psychology, physics, philosophy and digital technology. He works with a team of artists, developers and technicians to realize his complex installations."
Staci Boris, Chief Curator
Elmhurst Art Museum
Press Release:
"Elmhurst Art Museum presents the first solo exhibition for multi-media artist David Wallace Haskins. Following the debut of his remarkable Skycube, currently installed on the Museum’s outdoor pavilion, Haskins' has produced 7 new site-specific installations in the exhibition galleries. Employing light, space, time and sound, these immersive and interactive works challenge visitors’ sense of perception, introducing new ways to physically experience and understand everyday phenomena. Haskins’ innovative and poetic works aim to inspire awe and wonder while connecting people through shared experiences."
Jenny Gibbs, Executive Director
Elmhurst Art Museum
Sat, March 5, 2 pm - Tour and Talk with Artist David Wallace Haskins and guest Christopher Canfield, Soundcube technical developer
Sat, March 12, 2 pm - Kapoor, Klein, Turrell: David Wallace Haskins In Context, A Talk by Annie Morse, Senior Lecturer at The Art Institute of Chicago
Sat, March 19, 2 pm - Tour and Talk with Artist David Wallace Haskins
Sat, March 26, 2 pm - Panel Discussion: Artists Working with Light, Space and Time
Fri, April 1, 6-9 pm - World Premiere of Myrios by David Wallace Haskins, An Interactive Event
Sat, April 2, 2 pm - Tour and Talk with Artist David Wallace Haskins
Sat, April 9, 2 pm - Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, Lecture by Stephanie D’Alessandro, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of International Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago
Sat, April 16, 2 pm - Perception and Mindfulness Workshop with Artist David Wallace Haskins and Dr. Paul Holmes
Thurs, April 28, 6:30 - Book Discussion, On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation by Alexandra Horowitz
Sat, April 30, 2 pm - Tour and Talk about the Science of Light and Art with David Wallace Haskins and guest Steve Davey, Technical Operations Specialist at Argonne National Laboratory
Sat, May 7, 2 pm - Family Workshop on Looking and Listening, led by David Wallace Haskins, appropriate for children ages 5+
Untitled
2010-15
HID light
Part of a series of interactive light and shadow works
VOID.BLUE
2016
Internet application via url: void.blue
Premiered at EXPO CHICAGO/2016.
VOID.BLUE is an artwork of infinite space that can be freely accessed by any device through the url: void.blue. Although the idea of the void or infinity is commonly used, it is rarely if ever actually understood in any experiential sense. VOID.BLUE offers users a brief experience of the joys and frustrations encountered creating and navigating inside infinite space.
Untitled
2010-
Corten steel, glass
96 x 96 x 96 in. (244 x 244 x 244 cm)
Proposal
Advent
2011
Cotton matboard, proprietary pigment
process, extruded polystyrene, natural
and fluorescent light
30 x 30 x 7 in. (76.2 x 76.2 x 76.2 cm)
Private collection
Skywall
2004-2010
From the Skywall series
Steel, aluminum, wood, glass, existing architecture
Total dimensions variable
Private residence
(commissioned site-specific installs are available for purchase)
Bridging sculpture, architecture and painting, Skywall brings the full vertical dimension of the sky down to the horizontal space in which we live. The moving image of the sky is not a digital projection or display—it is the actual three-dimensional sky brought to the pictorial plane.
During the day, atmospheric changes move across Skywall like a living painting continually recreating itself. In the evening it moves through endless hues of blue until a deep black square emerges, slowly revealing a composition of moving stars and planets.
"Infinite and immeasurable in depth. It is a painting of air, something into which you can see, through the parts which are near you, into those which are far off; something which has no surface and through which we can plunge far and farther, and without stay or end, into the profundity of space."
John Ruskin
Advent II
2012
Cotton matboard, proprietary pigment
process, extruded polystyrene,
natural and fluorescent light
33 x 33 x 7 in. (83.8 x 83.8 x 17.8 cm)
Private collection
Untitled
2010
Limited edition C-print
Untouched photographs of the sun and sky taken
through organic apertures.
Untitled
2010
Limited edition C-print
Untouched photographs of the sun and sky taken
through organic apertures.
Untitled
2014
Limited edition C-print
Untouched photographs of the sun and sky taken
through organic apertures.
Work