Michael Stutz, Fallbrook, Calif., www.stutzart.com
Proposal for US 1/64 Pedestrian Greenway Bridge
About the artist
“I approach public art with the sense that everyday life creates a type of theater in which the daily ebb and flow of a place reveals a drama that I accentuate in my work. Using organic forms, I explore the dichotomies between permanent and impermanent, public and private, external and internal, to create an intimate and human ideal. Light plays through the latticed forms of my woven sculptures, blending line, movement, time and the body. The viewer is placed in a child-like relationship to the larger-than-life figures, but the monumental scale is softened by a yielding openness. Each sculpture has a focused, hand-wrought, craftsmanship that invites viewer interaction with the art.
“My public commissions include the “Pneumatic Dreamer” seen atop the W Hotel, San Francisco, adjacent to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and “Facing the Crowd,” two playful faces at the PGE Park in Portland, Oregon. For the Los Angeles Metro Transit Authority Gold Line’s Mission Street Station I installed “Astride-Aside,” a 10-foot tall walking figure that is a whimsical image of the average commuter. For this project I worked closely with a committee of merchants, politicians, and community members to create a public plaza design which compliments the final artwork and overall station layout for this gateway project to the city of South Pasadena.
“Public art is most successful when it adopted by the community, earning status as a signifying place-marker/place-maker that mirrors the viewer’s sense of self within public space.”
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