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Description:
This artist-designed courtyard contains
Otto Rigan’s classic monoliths of sandstone and glass, this time
featured in pairs. The title Duet also alludes to two half
circles that provide seating. Landscaping and lighting further
enhance the site.
Funding:
This project was funded by the individual developer as a requirement
of Tempe's Art in Private Development Ordinance.
Artist biography:
Although
Rigan was trained as a painter, he has pursued many broad-ranging
and cross-disciplinary projects throughout his career. While still
in college he completed his first large-scale public commission. In
his early 20s he apprenticed to a master architectural glass
craftsman. In his late 20s he wrote and photographed four books and
lectured widely on their subjects. It wasn’t until Rigan was in his
early 30s that he began to develop the sculpture for which he is
most noted. His interest in the temporal medium of glass and how it
manipulates light and the permanence and density of stone, merged
into a series of sculptural explorations that continue to this day.
Rigan splits his time between making studio-based autonomous works
and applying his "way of seeing" to public and corporate spaces.
Often the larger commissions merge architectural, landscape and
other disciplines as an extension of the Artist’s palette. He
started an Architectural practice in addition to his other studio
activities.
Artist statement:
Duet
contains some of the Artist’s Markers in an
Artist-designed Sculpture Courtyard.
Markers seek to find a
balance between the unpredictability of found material, and the
exactness of the sawn "marks." These marks imply some sort of
oblique language, while the stone unselfconsciously tells its own
story. Neither the stone nor the "language" of the marks is meant to
overwhelm each other. In these pieces the artist seeks parity,
balancing the conscious and unselfconscious components. Usually, a
Marker is a standing piece in reference to the prehistoric
"standing stones" common to the United Kingdom. |
