As devout fans of Modernism, at Optima we love to experiment with form and function. That’s how Optima Co-Founder David Hovey Sr. got into sculpture. Combining his love of art with his interest in materials, David Hovey Sr. began manipulating steel to create striking sculptural pieces that play to Optima’s architectural spaces. Today, we’re examining one of his sculptures: Sundance.
While many of our sculptures manifest in a variety of sizes and colors, Sundance is notable because of its goliath frame. Standing at thirteen feet tall, this impressive structure and its bold angles make a lasting first impression. The piece expresses the nature of the thin steel plate from which it was fabricated, showcasing structural potential with three-dimensional, dynamic components and an inviting sense of openness.
It’s no coincidence that Sundance is nestled in the landscaped courtyard of Optima Camelview Village. Sundance is built literally and metaphorically to connect to the ground, giving the sculpture context and roots within space. Meanwhile, being swathed in vibrant primary hues, the sculpture plays complement to the property’s red architectural details and the vibrant color palette displayed throughout the gardens.
Whether we’re experimenting with form, function, size or color — at Optima we love to playfully implement sculpture as yet another component of thoughtful design.
The Bauhaus is a renowned institution in the history of Modernist architecture — and art in general. But what may come as a surprise to many: the most commercially successful department of the school was actually the Bauhaus weaving workshop. And even more notable, this workshop was run by a slew of highly innovative, influential female designers.
When the Bauhaus opened in 1919, the progressive school was heralded as an equitable place. In fact, its founder Walter Gropius even wrote in the Bauhaus bylaws: “Every eligible person whose talent and training are considered adequate will be accepted without regard to age and sex.” Gropius’s philosophy was stronger in theory than in action. He later became known for believing men thought in three dimensions, while women only thought in two.
Because of this gender bias, when women applied to the school, they were directed away from heavy craft areas, such as carpentry and metalwork, to a workshop considered more appropriate for women. This was the weaving workshop, which Gropius even referred to as “the women’s section” of the school.
Like many other women in architecture, the female weavers at the Bauhaus wouldn’t be put down by others’ limited perspectives. Designers such as Anni Albers, Gunta Stölzl and Otti Berger took the two-dimensional textile craft and breathed new life into it. In addition to creating patterns that were both commercially marketable and had deep influence on the fine arts world of the time, these female weavers also played with form and function. They took weaving beyond the two dimensional — inadvertently, defying Gropius’s backwards beliefs.
Claire Zeisler, Free Standing Yellow, 1968, shown at Weaving Beyond the Bauhaus. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
A Collaborative Cohort
While the other workshops of the Bauhaus dealt in the highly theoretical and abstract, and often struggled to succeed commercially, the success of the weaving workshop stood in stark contrast. Besides its practical success, the workshop was also notable in the way that its female members taught to and learned from one another in a deeply collaborative process. Because Bauhaus members like Albers went on to teach their learnings globally, the impact of this collaboration is still seen in the weaving world today on figures like Sheila Hicks, Claire Zeisler and others.
Most recently, the Art Institute of Chicago hosted an exhibit titled Weaving Beyond the Bauhaus, which ran from 2019-2020. The exhibit explored the influence of the Bauhaus weaving workshop across the Atlantic and across the decades. In lieu of traditional placards for each work, viewers navigated the exhibit by reading quote cards from various women in the field, all of whom were in conversation with one another, and with one another’s work.
The women weavers from the Bauhaus exemplify an ongoing trend in the world of architecture and design: despite the odds or expectations, female designers are always ready and willing to rise to the challenge.
Our appreciation for Modernism extends past architecture into all mediums of creative thought, including our love for sculpture (and our own sculpture at Optima). Sculpture has long been an artistic expression across decades and culture, but the beginnings of Modern sculpture sparked with renowned visionary, Auguste Rodin.
Setting the Stage
By the 20th century, sculpture practices in Europe largely revolved around Neoclassical and Romantic ideals. Contour and clarity defined figures, and artists were inspired by the art and culture of classical Greek antiquity. Often sculptors even portrayed their subjects in Roman costume instead of contemporary clothing. But the world of sculpture would see dramatic change at the 1900 Paris Exposition, when Auguste Rodin would use the world’s fair to unveil a new way of thinking when it came to sculpted form.
Auguste Rodin. Credit: public domain.
Auguste Rodin
Rodin came from a working-class family in Paris and throughout his turbulent youth, taught himself to draw and paint. Eventually, he learned the trade of ornamental design and sculpture, but by the 1890s, had grown exhausted of the style. Rodin was a naturalist, more concerned with character and emotion than he was with tradition, idealism or decorative beauty. His work emphasized detailed, textured surfaces and the juxtaposition of light and shadow, a style that was met with criticism initially. At the Paris Exposition, Rodin showcased a series of pieces that would turn an entire industry upside down at the turn of the century.
Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin, which displayed at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Modern Sculpture
Modernist styles that followed Rodin’s debut included Art Nouveau, Cubism, De Stijl, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, among many others. It seemed that once the creative floodgates were open, artists ran with the possibilities of bending form past the boundaries of traditional realism. Especially since the 1950s, Modernist trends in sculpture have become increasingly more flexible to include new materials, abstractions and approaches. And we’re thankful they’ve made such progress; it’s allowed our own expressions of form to flourish over the years, and contribute beautiful, unique sculpted pieces to our Optima communities.
As devout fans of Modernism, at Optima we love to experiment with form and function. That’s how Optima Co-Founder David Hovey Sr. got into sculpture. Combining his love of art with his interest in materials, David Hovey Sr. began manipulating steel to create striking sculptural pieces that play complement to Optima’s architectural spaces. Today, we’re examining one of his sculptures: Curves and Voids.
Curves and Voids at DCHGlobal Whale Bay House in New Zealand.
Like all original Optima sculptures, Curves and Voids can be found across our properties in various colors and sizes, as evidenced above. But what never changes is the form of the piece: Curves and Voids plays with the expression of steel and explores ideas of its potential. This play is demonstrated in grand, sweeping curves that make up the various sculptural components. Meanwhile, voids are laser cut within the sculpture’s steel planes. These holes provide gaps and textures to contrast and juxtapose the sculpture’s curves.
The sweeping curves of Curves and Voids play perfect complement to the stark Modernist lines in our communities. At Optima Sonoran Village’s sculpture walk, Curves and Voids stands boldly expressed in natural Cor-Ten steel. The steel’s raw coloration was chosen so as not to compete with the vibrant colors in the building’s facade and landscaping. Meanwhile, at Optima DCHGlobal’s Whale Bay House in New Zealand, Curves and Voids is supersized in the courtyard, becoming a show stopping statement piece for contemplation.
Whether we’re experimenting with form, function, size or color — at Optima we love to playfully implement sculpture as yet another component of thoughtful design.
We love Scottsdale for many reasons, one of which is its vibrant and bustling arts scene. Home to the Scottsdale Arts District, the city makes its unique voice heard through striking public art such as Jack Knife by Ed Mell. To understand more about the local arts scene and to celebrate its impact on the city our residents call home, today we’re exploring the work and artistry behind Jack Knife.
Jack Knife boldly commands attention at the intersection of Marshall Way and Main Street in Downtown Scottsdale — the center of the Scottsdale Arts District — mere steps away from Optima Sonoran Village. The piece is the perfect introduction to the city’s history and culture, depicting a rider astride a bucking horse modelled after the official city seal. The bronze sculpture, which sits on a high pedestal, stands over eight feet high. Even more notable: Jack Knife is Ed Mell’s first ever large-scale sculpture.
Completed in 1993, Mell says of his work: “Jack Knife has a reverence for the Old West. It is not traditional, but yet it has a traditional theme. The angularity accelerates the power and energy of the rider and horse, more than accurate depiction.” While the piece may have been his first large-scale experimentation, Mell is one of Arizona’s premier artists.
Mell grew up in Phoenix, and his artistic practice is inspired by the natural beauty and wonder of the desert. He works primarily in oil paint, creating natural expressions of the Western landscape that exhibit striking colors and Cubist elements. This bold, graphic style is translated evidently into Jack Knife, and the artists’ passion for Arizona shines through, too.
It’s passionate creations like these that inspire us every day, and make us proud to call Scottsdale Optima’s second home.
Towering over Phoenix’s Civic Space Park is a suspended, monumental web of light and color, arguably best viewed by night. The enormous piece of public art is titled Her Secret is Patience, and makes a striking impression, whether you’re seeing it for the first time or the hundredth. Today, we explore the work and artistry behind one of Phoenix’s most notable pieces of public art, Her Secret is Patience.
Completed in 2009, the monumental installation was the vision by artist and sculptor Janet Echelman in collaboration with global, award-winning teams of engineers, architects, planners and fabricators. The multi-layered form is secured from five points, suspending 38 feet from the ground. Echelman credits inspiration to the surrounding nature, from Arizona’s distinctive monsoon cloud formations to saguaro flowers.
The sculpture consists of painted, galvanized steel, polyester twine netting and colored lights that change gradually with the seasons, transforming to cool hues in the summer and warmer in the winter. The specialized lighting gives off a unique glow, creating an otherworldly sense of whimsy in the middle of Phoenix. During the day, the structure casts intricate shadows from the Arizona sun. The creative team and work itself have garnered a handful of awards for their inventive process and impactful impression on the Phoenix art scene.
Like our own work in Arizona, Her Secret is Patience takes cues from nature to create something extraordinary. Its name even stems from the same source; Ralph Waldo Emerson’s full quote reads, “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
With aligning principles, artists and aesthetics, our practice of Modernism and the Bauhaus movements often overlap. Chicago’s Bauhaus movement offered unique contributions to the city’s growth, and continues to inspire. Today, we dive into its past and its present impact.
Troubled Beginnings
During WWII, many artists and instructors involved with the Bauhaus movement were forced to flee Germany (you can read a more in-depth history on our past blog post,100 Years of Bauhaus.) A group of instructors took refuge in the United States, a few taking particular interest in Chicago and the Midwest. Among them was László Moholy-Nagy, who was enlisted by the Chicago Association of Arts and Industries to help open a similar Bauhaus school to attract talent. With Moholy-Nagy’s eccentric leadership, The New Bauhaus was born.
Chicago Landscape #26, 1964, Art Sinsabaugh. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
An Expansive Practice
Considering its widespread impact on the art world and Chicago, The New Bauhaus was a short-lived school, its formation filled with dramatic disagreements between leadership and changes in locations. Moholy-Nagy and other teachers built an atypical educational experience that produced eccentric, groundbreaking artists; however, the work they produced wasn’t particularly practical or profitable. After his death, the school was absorbed by the Illinois Institute of Technology and transferred to the care of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Despite its turbulent trials, Chicago’s New Bauhaus school influenced many artists and industries, ranging from textiles and furniture to photography and sculpture. Ludwig Hilberseimer, another German immigrant, made notable strides in urban planning. Nathan Lerner and Art Sinsabaugh helped define the visual culture in Chicago. Emmett McBain had a remarkable impact on the representation of Black Americans in advertising. Often overlooked through the lens of history, the women active in Chicago’s Bauhaus movement had impactful careers as well, from Marion Mahony Griffin’s architectural and planning work and Elsa Kula’s colorful, eye-catching work.
From architecture and urban design to painting and sculpture, the legacy of the Bauhaus is evident throughout Chicago. And ultimately, its relationship with Modernism naturally means it’s also reflected in our own buildings and sense of design.
Our reverence for sculpture and for the cities in which we operate collide to create a deep appreciation for the public art of Chicago. And as we explore the craft in the city we love, we’re doing deep dives into famous public works from downtown to vibrant neighborhood pockets. This week, it’s all about Joan Miro’s Chicago.
History of Miro’s Chicago
This iconic sculpture by iconic artist Joan Miro was first titled The Sun, The Moon and One Star but is known now as Miro’s Chicago. Originally, Miro was commissioned by Brunswick Corporation in 1969 to design a sculpture, but the project halted when Brunswick withdrew funding. In 1979, Chicago’s first female mayor Jane Byrne reinvigorated the project, promising to fund the first half of the project if others would commit to funding the second half. Together, foundations, institutions and individuals rallied to commit that final stretch of funding, and Miro himself reduced the cost of construction by completely donating his design to the city. It’s only appropriate, then, that Miro’s Chicago is an iconic fixture in the city, as it was brought to fruition by collaborative and impassioned locals.
Visiting Miro’s Chicago
The sculpture is tucked modestly away in a narrow plaza between the Cook County Administration Building and the Chicago Temple Building in Chicago’s downtown financial district. The plaza, known as Brunswick Plaza, is directly south of the Daley Center and nearly directly south of another iconic Chicago public art piece, the Chicago Picasso.
Miro’s Chicago, in its modest and peaceful crevice downtown, makes for a serene location for local workers to have lunch outside. The concrete, bronze and ceramic tile façade towers to almost 40 feet tall, and its curving figure has earned the nickname “Miss Chicago.” The large pedestal beneath the sculpture invites passerby to sit and marvel — either at the statue above, or the striking Chicago architecture even farther above. As a piece of public art, it does exactly what we at Optima know and love sculpture for: it elicits an emotional experience from its viewer, while activating the incredible architectural space around it.
As devout fans of Modernism, at Optima we love to experiment with form and function. That’s how Optima Co-Founder David Hovey Sr. got into sculpture. Combining his love of art with his interest in materials, David Hovey Sr. began manipulating steel to create striking sculptural pieces that play complement to Optima’s architectural spaces. Today, we’re examining one of his sculptures: Silver Fern.
Silver Fern in the 7160 tower at Optima Kierland Apartments
Like all original Optima sculptures, Silver Fern is a piece that has many versions, varying in both size and color. But what never changes is the form of the piece: Silver Fern is a uniquely two-dimensional sculpture. Silver Fern’s two-dimensionality allows the sculpture to explore the nature of a flat piece of steel, given depth through other experimental plays. The smooth piece of steel is laser cut with circles and triangles that create depth through shadows and voids. Meanwhile, jagged edges and sharp corners play perfect juxtaposition to the soft, sweeping curve of the steel, further illuminating the material’s multifaceted ways of being.
Silver Fern at 7180 Optima Kierland
The sculpture’s many adaptable forms play perfectly in our various communities. In the 7160 tower at Optima Kierland Apartments, two iterations of Silver Fern pose side-by-side, one in brilliant orange and one in striking yellow, their curves blending together to create an undulating pattern. The sculptures are seen through the front glass curtain wall by anyone walking up through the courtyard, activating the space with energy from the get-go. Meanwhile at 7180 Optima Kierland, a Silver Fern piece swathed in neon green plays bold contrast to Modernist red chairs in the lobby.
Whether we’re experimenting with form, function, size or color — at Optima we love to playfully implement sculpture as yet another component of thoughtful design.
As we continue to explore Chicago’s public art, we recognize and celebrate that sculpture comes in all shapes, forms and purposes. Today, we’re exploring an iconic Chicago fixture, oft-overlooked in the medium: Millennium Park’s Crown Fountain. Alongside being the perfect place to cool off on a hot summer day in the city — or to people watch — Crown Fountain is a fascinating and experimentally expressive work of sculptural art.
Designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, Crown Fountain consists of two fifty-foot glass block towers at opposite ends of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video footage of faces, collected from 1,000 different Chicago residents, and spurt water from an outlet in the screen centered on the video projections’ mouths. The interactive sculpture is a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles, often used as the source of water projects in fountains, where the mythical creatures’ eruption of water symbolizes giving life. Overall, construction took six months and cost $17 million, adding Crown Fountain to Chicago’s collection of world-renowned public art in July of 2004.
The video footage of the faces projected was a collaborative project between the artist, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and Columbia College Chicago (CCC). 75 ethnic, social and religious organizations were asked to nominate individuals for the project, and those individuals were then filmed by SAIC students using professional-grade equipment. Filming the footage was such an intensive process that it became an informal master’s course in public art. Overall, 1,051 subjects were filmed and 960 subjects’ footage is utilized for the sculpture.
Crown Fountain was inevitably one of Millennium Park’s most controversial installations. Many were worried that the height of the towers would interrupt the architecture of the public park. Yet the sculpture won its place in the public heart with its quirkiness and comfort, inviting all to laugh and play with it. Crown Fountain’s legacy, like the legacy of Chicago, is one that celebrates community, playfulness, art and innovation.
