The Elements of Matter - The Art Bar
The Art Bar at the Performing Art Center in Portland Oregon
Sculptural Glass Bar "The Art Bar" for the Portland Center for the Performing Arts
This interactively illuminated glass sculpture was created by laminating 2 layers of glass together with optical adhesive. The carved and etched designs are onthe underside as well as floating between the layers. LED lights were inserted up into areas of carved out glass with special lenses that direct the light sideways. The edges were chiseled so they, as well as the carved designs, would glow from the interior illumination. The sculpture is interactively illuminated so that when you move nearby, a preprogrammed illumination sequence starts a pulsing light pattern that will eventually end when there is no longer any movement nearby.
The graceful curved lines and spiral motifs were inspired by old scientific research images from the CERN Supercollider in Switzerland. They represent thebroken apart atoms that scientist's smashed at very high speeds. Large magnets in a hydrogen gas filled chamber spiraled the broken atoms into stillness so they could be detected and examined leading to the discovery of sub-Atomic particles such as Quarks and Muons. The research today is all done with computers and the beautiful images are no longer created. The straight and slightly curved lines represent cosmic rays that are constantly flowing through our bodies and the earth at every moment.
The sculpture is meant to be a "window" in to the invisible worlds of atomic particles that are only revealed through scientific instruments and research. By sculpting these images into large, tactile objects, I hope to inspire younger generations to become interested in science or the 'Art' of science.
Lawrence Morrell’s art works are inspired from scientific research, nature and the subtle, minute textures that surround us but are invisible to the naked eye. Throughout Morrell's professional life, he has created images and textures in glass.
Morrell initially studied fine art at the University of Oregon before moving to New York city for 15 years. He collaborated with other artists to create the NY Vietnam War Memorial, a 40 foot long etched glass wall in Manhattan. Morrell was interviewed on the McNeil/Lehrer News hour on Public Television about the experience. Morrell has created sculptures for hotel facades near times square and Cartier's display windows on 5th avenue. In 1994, he came back to his home town of Portlandand has continued to devote his life to creating science inspired art.
Article by Margie Boule of the Oregonian
Gentleness of nature, violence of the universe collide in bar designs
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Many years ago, Portland glass sculptor Lawrence Morrell took a two-day battery of tests to determine vocational strengths and weaknesses. When the results came back, Lawrence realized he was "split right down the middle." He would be equally good as a scientist or an artist.
So he became an artist fascinated by science.
Tonight, his latest creation will be unveiled in the lobby of the Portland Performing Arts Center. It's a sculpted glass bar, more than 30 feet long, with 51 embedded LED lights, each placed at the end of a graceful spiral Lawrence etched in the glass.
It's not a random pattern. It's a representation of subatomic particles and cosmic rays. Lawrence says the designs are "inspired by research images from CERN, the supercollider in Switzerland. The glass is meant to be a window, to show what science has revealed."
Lawrence's imagination was first captured by images of subatomic particles when he saw an article in National Geographic Magazine, about 10 years ago. "It was a piece about how America had shut down our [superconducting] supercollider after spending so much money, and even though it showed so much promise. I loved those images." And he never forgot them.
Lawrence was approached last spring and was told the Metropolitan Exposition and Recreation Commission was going to open a new restaurant called the ArtBar & Bistro in the Performing Arts Center. When asked if he had any ideas for a bar to be created beneath the rotunda, Lawrence's mind flew to the images he'd admired.
He called a friend at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to ask where he could see subatomic images. His friend explained that when this nation closed its supercollider, the Europeans kept theirs functioning, collecting images for years.
"But today they use computers," Lawrence says. "So there are none of these really interesting, beautiful designs from science anymore. Now it's all ones and zeroes; it's all data."
Lawrence contacted scientists at CERN, in Switzerland, and asked if he could see supercollider images from years past.
"Every time I talk to scientists about what I do, they get excited," Lawrence says. He explained he wanted to create a sculpted bar of glass etched with images they'd captured with the supercollider. "A few scientists there took me under their wing" and gave Lawrence access to their in-house image bank. From that he chose the designs for the glass bar.
But it's much more than a static piece of work. The LED lights Lawrence embedded in the glass are linked, via 2,000 feet of wiring, to "an electronic brain that creates patterns and pulsing rays of light." The light is directed sideways, which makes the chiseled edges of the glass glow.
And it's interactive. From the moment the bar comes alive in the morning ("It kind of shivers, and the lights run through a sequence that shows it is shaking itself awake," Lawrence says), until it falls silent after midnight, the bar is quietly waiting to be noticed. Motion detectors sense when people approach the bar and set off a reaction. "If you walk down the bar, you'll trigger other interactive sensors," Lawrence says, "and the bar will then create second and third patterns" of light.
Sometimes the lights glow, sometimes they pulse, sometimes they dim. "It's almost as if they have their own pulsing energy source."
This week, as Lawrence tinkered with the bar in preparation for its public unveiling tonight, people walking through the lobby of the Performing Arts Center were repeatedly drawn to the bar.
"They try to touch the images inside the glass," Lawrence says. "That's because of the spirals and curves. We're very much attracted to these shapes. They occur in nature, in fern spirals, and in ripples and eddies in water and all those kinds of organic things. These are flowerlike shapes. And yet the images are of atomic particles smashed almost at light speed. So it kind of crosses the bridge between nature, delicate and soft, unfurling its leaves, and the violence of the universe, smashing into existence."
It makes you think Lawrence could just as easily have been a poet or a philosopher.
The people studying the bar this week probably are glad he's not. A good number reached out to touch the glass. They studied the lights, trying to discern patterns. They asked a lot of questions.
But one man wandering through the lobby knew exactly what he was seeing. "He said, 'Aha, subatomic particle tracks.' He was a scientist."
Lawrence's ultimate goal, he says, was not just to create art that would draw people in and fascinate them. "I wanted to do something as an artist to help spur people's interest in extremely expensive but far-reaching, farsighted research that really pays off in the long run . . . the science that I think gave our nation greatness." Lawrence says he wants to get people interested in science again, "because science is our future".
"That seems like a worthwhile goal as an artist. As well as getting to make stuff that's really cool."
See Lawrence Morrell's bar tonight, First Thursday, in the Performing Arts Center, at Southwest Broadway and Main Street in downtown Portland.