Suspended sculpture on the ceiling plinth of the client’s lobby, consisting of eighty-five borosilicate glass discs, each eighteen inches in diameter and coated via a vacuum deposition of thin film dichroic, suspended with aluminum rods and alight with LED lighting. The sculpture is accompanied with a commissioned video composition on the adjacent AV wall by the artists.

Inspired by the sun’s spectral wavelength and the movement of light, Journey of the Sun follows an analemma – a diagram that traces the sun’s position from a fixed position on Earth throughout a year. The eighty-five convex translucent color coated glass discs are suspended and arranged in the shape of a slender figure eight curve, like an analemma. The sculpture seemingly floats within the client’s lobby, its integrated illumination creates an array of caustics and reflections on the ceiling plinth. The refractions of colors, ranging from yellow, red, blue mix and overlay creating an organic and dynamic sense of fluidity. Journey of the Sun is accompanied by a video piece, both echoing the spectral hues and energy of the daily spectacle of light on earth.

Journey of the Sun imitates the full range of colors of the wavelength of light, gradually shifting and transforming the space into an ephemeral glow, immersing visitors in spectral tones of hues.

LUFTWERK, Journey of the Sun, 2023. Site-specific commission in collaboration with Volume Gallery.

A three-dimensional mural by Nigerian native and Brooklyn, NY-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous symbolizes the rich history and cultural heritage of the former Brooklyn neighborhood, a predominantly Black community in Charlotte’s Second Ward that was razed in the city’s “urban renewal” movement in the 1960s and ‘70s.

OLALEKAN JEYIFOUS, Illumitage, 2023. Site-specific commission.

This light sculpture fuses nature and technology. It contains real, hand-picked dandelions that individually connect to LED lights and rest on phosphorous bronze frames. This labor-intensive process is a statement against mass production and throwaway culture.

DRIFT re-connects humanity with nature through technology. Dutch artists Lonneke Gordijn (1980) and Ralph Nauta (1978) founded DRIFT in 2007. With a full multidisciplinary team, they work on experiential sculptures, installations and performances. DRIFT manifests the phenomena and hidden properties of nature with the use of technology in order to learn from the Earth’s underlying mechanisms and to re-establish our connection to it.

DRIFT, Fragile Future FFC 3.1, 2011, dandelion seed, phosphorus bronze, LED. Acquired through Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

Solar Plains’ imagines expansive solar fields blanketing the rolling hills and soft valleys so commonly associated with the landscape of our natural state, echoing a commitment to renewable energy so desperately needed in today’s evolving world. Through industrial metalworking processes, flat sheets of stainless steel are formed and bent along numerous vertical lines into undulating horizontal strips, then fabricated and welded together to create a complex network of stainless steel facets. Each individual facet reflects light in its own unique way.

Thomas Campbell practice evolved from the depths of the industrial steel world following a seven-year stint as a steelworker for his family’s 136 year-old steel fabrication business. Steeped in this lineage, his work seeks to advance the familial tradition beyond the constraints of the industrial world, shifting our perceptions of a material often viewed as cold, rigid, dark, and unyielding in its modern industrial application.

THOMAS CAMPBELL, Solar Plains, 2023, stainless steel, blackened steel. Site-specific commission.

Comprised of cast porcelain and mirrors, this work is inspired by the complex interconnection of urban life. To create Connected, Thomas Schmidt folded a large printed map of Charlotte’s electrical grid along the city’s busiest streets. The resulting folded surface was then 3D scanned, 3D printed and ultimately cast in porcelain. This abstract map in combination with the reflective mirrors serve as a poetic embodiment of the way in which we as individuals and a collective community are connected through our shared resources.

In a time when experience is increasingly influenced by technology, Thomas Schmidt’s work attempts to both integrate and blur the boundaries between high tech and traditional craft methods as means for exploring the tactile world. Schmidt draws upon installation art and architecture to orchestrate and capture a variety of material moments for the viewer to experience and unfold.

THOMAS SCHMIDT, Connected, 2023, cast porcelain, integrated mirrors. Site-specific commission.

Composed from several hundred individually cast hydrocal plaster segments, Clear Sky resembles a cluster of hovering cloud-like forms spanning the three walls. The piece presents a whimsical contradiction – parts that are built systematically from a dense and textural material accumulate into forms that are amorphous and appear buoyant and even ephemeral. Consistent with the theme of a future of cleaner energy, the installation plainly evokes a feeling of fresh air, with a nod to the simple joy of cloud gazing.

BEN BUTLER, Clear Sky, 2023, painted cast hydrocal. Site-specific commission.

Gregory’s work uses cloth construction as a fundamental center, a place to start from and move back to. With a background in weaving, she sees herself as a builder; drawing clear connections between the lines of thread laid perpendicularly through a warp and the construction of architectural spaces.

Formally, Gregory’s work takes shape through a pallet of building materials either paired with or mimicking textiles. She finds a tension between materials like concrete and the structural patterns of cloth. By pairing these seemingly opposite worlds together she inverts material stereotypes, using the ‘delicate’ material to exhibit strength or exposing the ‘structural’ materials’ instabilities. These gestures allow for a reinterpretation of material identities leaving the viewer to confront their understanding of these everyday utilities.

CRYSTAL GREGORY, Below the Surface, 2023, handwoven textile cast in concrete. Site-specific commission in collaboration with Momentum Gallery.