The Cloud
Mesa Arts Center announces the selection of internationally-acclaimed artist
Cecil Balmond to design its 21st Century Café Society shade sculpture project.
The structural fluidity of this monumental work will provide permanent shade over a community gathering place and connect the Mesa Art Center campus with Main Street in downtown Mesa. Following a public art request for qualifications, jurors chose Balmond’s winning concept from a group of three finalists who were invited to submit designs.
“Balmond’s design for the shade sculpture, called ‘The Cloud,’ will create enhanced pedestrian interest, particularly given its location opposite a major new light rail station and across the street from Mesa’s City Hall,” said Cindy Ornstein, executive director of Mesa Arts Center and director of Arts and Culture for the City of Mesa. “The gathering place and the pedestrian activity will support growth of public activity on the adjacent blocks, and extended visits to downtown Mesa by thousands of MAC patrons.”
The suspended cloud-like art structure, designed to align with the existing MAC architecture and landscape, will have three main components when complete: tensile fabric, which matches the existing iconic shade sails; columns with trapeziums, angled to create an inhabitable field; and glass oculi covered with dichroic film, the shadows of which change color with the movement of the sun.
Nighttime lighting will make “The Cloud”
a beacon welcoming visitors to the
Center after dark.
It will provide shade for a new outdoor
seating area just north of MAC’s
Theaters Building.
“The aim of the sculpture is to surprise and inspire, in addition to providing a cool place to take cover and for visitors to meet and collaborate,” said Balmond of his design. “I wanted to create an environment that changes your perception of space and is completely capable of being used for different purposes, in alignment with Mesa Arts Center’s needs.” Balmond will collaborate with MAC’s original design architect to ensure the design is compatible with the site and with the original design intentions of MAC’s architecture.
The artist has been engaged to develop his concept to a 50 percent completed design. During this process, Balmond will invite feedback and an exchange of ideas from the community. The shade sculpture design and the conceptual plans for expanding and enhancing the Center’s North Plaza will then be employed to generate interest in support of a fundraising campaign for the North Plaza renovation and the construction of the shade sculpture.
Mesa Arts Center’s 21st Century Café Society project, which also includes the Alliance Pavilion Stage, completed last year, an interactive work of public art currently under development and the North Plaza renovation, was chosen from more than 1,200 applications as an exceptional example of creative placemaking. The 21st Center Café Society project is supported in part by a competitive ArtPlace America Grant.
More info about Mesa Arts Center
Cecil Balmond is considered to be one of the most significant creators of his generation. Successfully occupying multiple roles as artist, designer, architect, engineer, theoretician and writer, he is currently principal of Balmond Studio, with offices in London, Hong Kong and Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the Paul Philippe Cret Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Design.
His light sculpture “Snow Words,” commissioned by the State of Alaska Arts Council, was named one of the best public artworks of 2013 by the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Year in Review.
