1999

Remo Campopiano December 25, 1999 This idea came to me while flying home after bringing my daughter back to West Palm Beach. Providence Lights I have a new idea that I'm considering for Convergence XIII. I've been wanting to do something on a large scale, something that a lot of people will see.  When I was flying into Boston this Christmas, I was trying to identify the city of Providence out of all of the clusters of lights along the eastern seaboard. If you were looking on a map, you'd identify the capitol with a five-pointed star. My idea is to recreate that abstract symbol in the real world with blue lights. All I have to do is talk 30 home owners in to placing a blue light on the roof of there home.I was also considering getting the power and electric company to sponsor the project by giving each home-owner a hundred dollar rebate on their electric bill. October 8, 1999 I got this the kernel of this idea while visiting the DeCordova. iMac Ring The iMac Ring is a chandelier of 12 iMac computers programmed to display a variety of colorful animated graphics, text messages and periodic sounds. This is the kind of work where the initial programming (created by the artist) is just the beginning of what is possible. A community program can be developed to train participant to create their own graphical displays on the electronic mobile. August, 1999 Performance Sculpture Design a 40-foot tall sculpture that can be erected and removed during a 1-hour long performance by four carpenters and a conductor. July 28, 1999 These ideas came out of my sketchbook entries while visiting the Louvre in Paris. Brick Ruins Build a corner segment of a brick foundation with a window and wooden beams, similar to the one in the renaissance painting by Xxxx Xxxx. Use it to grow forms of ivy. 3 Ruined Cubes Continue the cement tree series, but this time as a ruin. Use a polymer concrete mix and a layering technique to make the blocks lighter. Use the same size, a total height of 6'. Staff Wall Create a 6-foot tall king's staff out of PVC pipe and a wooden top. Experiment with a series of staffs to make a rose trellis. These king staffs might make an interesting fencing device to grow roses on. Cycladic Idol Recreate the Cycladic idol as seen at the Louvre approximately 6-foot tall. Use it as a jumping off point to something else. This image is of the same period and feel, and might be useful in this piece. Wine Bottle Mechanism Create a mechanical-looking contraption to hold 8 wine bottles in place forming 4 hour-glass shapes lined up in a row. Use this as a railing fill structure, or a jumping off point. Glass Urn Create a scaffolding-like structure that holds in place 6-inch square plate-glass tiles in the shape of a Grecian urn. The prototype should be approximately six feet in height, but the structure should be scalable to around 20 feet. Cement Cloaks Build four headless cloaked figures on a wooden armature covered with old rugs and impregnated with polymer cements. July 2, 1999 This ideas developed out of my sketchbook entries while listening to an outdoor marching band concert at the Seekonk Public Library. Stone Sphere Use tumbled cement paving bricks to form the bottom 5/8th of a sphere. Create the top 1/4th of the sphere out of cast concrete formed against a Styrofoam form. Use copper tubing to hold the top in place high enough to form a perfect sphere. Pump water through the copper tubing and restrict the ends at the surface of the top cast so that the water covers the entire top cast and rolls down to the bottom brick catch basin. This piece has gone through several alterations and influences and is turning into something with potential. Slab Pyramid Create seven concrete slabs and separate them by copper spaces. Possible embed text in the edges of the slabs. Maybe have top 3 slabs taper back down. June 1999 This idea sprung out of a conversation with my parents around the diner table. And I think the upside down roof also started there. Grandfather's Rose Trellis Recreate grandfather Campopiano's rose trellis. This is a very strong image from my childhood. It is a connection back to a grandfather (my father's father) that I never knew. He died when my father was a teenager. My mother found a tiny picture of the trellis in the old photos shoe box. August 15, 1999, I reconstructed the trellis in a CAD program. In September I started building it. Click the thumbnail sketch to see views of the CAD model and a little about my ancestry. Up-side-down Roof Structure Design a roof-structure that can be constructed upside-down and askew to the ground plane. It should be designed so that the trusses can be fabricated at a truss-fabricating company and assembled by an experienced contracting company. The wood should be allowed to weather naturally. April, 1999 I've been fascinated with dead trees for years...not sure when this ideas germinated Wall Circle Tree Find 6 small dead trees (or large bushes) approximately 15 feet tall. Fabricate a steel wall bracket with 6 tree-trunk holders that allow the trees to fan out in a circle 60 degrees apart. Upside-down Hanging Tree Find a beautifully shaped dead tree about 30 feet tall. Build a simple tripodal structure to hold the tree upside-down with the top of the tree inches from the ground. Strip the bark from the tree, if it isn't already bare. Experiment with different finishes...possibly linseed oil, oil paint or gold leaf. March, 1999 Spring starts with the burning of the brush. This piece evolved out of the burn pile. Burnt Coversation Imbed 5 burnt logs into the ground creating a 5-foot diameter circle. Attach an additional smaller burnt log to the top using wooden pegs. Dig a small hollow into the ground between the logs and cover with 1-inch red stones.