Staircase
This translucent glass sculpture with embedded fiber optic lighting was created to show the inner beauty, revealed, that plants use to transfer energy inside their structures. The pulsing light represents the sap flowing inside the indigenous Ponderosa Pine trees that surround the Estate in eastern Oregon. The glowing staircase is visible from outside the house and was created to bring the beauty of the natural environment inside the house.
The vertical front and back edges of the stairs are thick glass, deeply carved to relate the "bark", the most accessible and immediately tactile part of a tree, to the invisible and intricate cellular structures inside the trunk that carry sap from the roots to the leaves.
On the bottom layer of each hollowed out step, hundreds of fiber optic strands carry light ( this "tree's" life force) from the center column, out along the branches and ending underneath sprays of thousands of delicately carved sprays of "needles". The fiber optic lighting system by Craig Marquart. The softly glowing light flows after you as you walk down, representing the living "Tree's" reaction to your presence.
