A show of hands

Artist commissioned to create two-story work of art on new Life Sciences Building gathers resources for project.

by Mary Jo Curtis

Kathryn Long '06 wants to leave her mark on Brown. Literally.

Long got her chance to accomplish that goal this month when she volunteered her handprint in the hope that it will be incorporated into a major public art project planned for the new Life Sciences Building.

The University's Public Art Committee - the group that brought Paola Pivi's "Donkey" and other loaned artworks to campus - has commissioned Pittsburgh artist Diane Samuels to create an ambitious two-story work of art to adorn the elevated glass bridge connecting sections of the new building on its second and third floors.

Samuels' design (her conception is at far left; detail near left) will feature two 900-square-foot handprints taken from members of the Brown community, with one print sandblasted into each side of the walkway. From the exterior of the building, passersby will see the hands in their entirety; inside they will see the ridges of the handprints and some 1,500 to 2,000 small pieces of glass, beads, mirrors and prisms that will be layered between the interior and exterior walls of glass. The glass fragments will be etched with snatches of poetry offered by Brown students, faculty and staff.

Samuels spent two days in the lobby of the List Art Center recently, electronically scanning Brown volunteers' handprints. Long was among the first of nearly 70 people to extend her hand.

"This is a great way to physically imprint Brown, and it's a great way to represent our community," she said.

Kate Veronneau '05 also volunteered to be a hand model. With RISD just down the hill, Brown "always gets second place" when people in Providence think about art, she noted.

"This is really exciting," Veronneau said. "I love large-scale art - and I loved the donkey. It's great to see this happening on the Brown campus."

Given the enthusiasm of her models, Samuels is now considering adding another feature to her design.

"I think I'm going to try to work all of the handprints into the inside of the bridge somehow," she said. Samuels is also just beginning to gather the poetry she'll need for the middle layer of the glass walls; she's asking members of the Brown community to send her snippets of poetry or full poems that have touched or inspired them.

Poetry - original or published - can be submitted to Samuels for consideration at poetryfrombrown@yahoo.com. She asks that proper attribution be included.)

To find inspiration relating to life science for her project, Samuels - who earned bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts at Carnegie Mellon University - read essays, watched "Nova" and "tried to bombard [herself] with information." She also called upon Alan Wells, a medical researcher and Brown alumnus, to arrange for her to visit two laboratories where she peered through microscopes at the basic elements of life.

"It was fabulous," Samuels said. The researchers "talked so passionately and poetically about what they're doing. They talked about looking through layers; even when looking at one cell, they have to keep the whole organism in mind. I loved the concept of micro and macro, and the idea of layers intrigued me."

Those concepts - and the idea that life is poetry - combined perfectly with the symbol she chose for life itself.

"The image of the hand - the human touch - has been used by Native Americans and in so many cultures," she explained. "I wanted something inside that would be infinite for viewers. ... With public art, you have repeated 'passes,' so I had to determine how to keep this vital. Perhaps people will see a fragment that will touch them in some way."

"We had five very, very accomplished artists as finalists to make presentations to us," said PAC member Richard Fishman, a professor of visual art. "What we loved about Diane's design is that it transforms the glass of the bridge, but still respects the architecture. Her piece is very rich: It connects with the community, and it connects with the work that will be going on in that building.

"This is the first major, specially-commissioned piece in the history of the University, and that's really exciting for us," Fishman added. "It symbolizes that Brown recognizes the significance of art, and it was the next logical step from placing loaned sculpture on campus."

Samuels has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, and she's been awarded a variety of large public and private commissions. She recently won an international competition for the permanent artwork at the new Center for Jewish History in New York, and she was commissioned to create a memorial garden in Grafeneck, Germany, a site of Nazi "euthanasia" experiments.

This, however, is the largest project she has ever undertaken - and it will be part of one of the largest facility projects in the University's history. Now in construction, the Life Sciences Building will provide 169,000 square feet of space to accommodate the steady growth in life sciences education and research at Brown. Samuels hopes to hire two people from Brown to help her assemble her project at a fabrication plant in Easton, Mass., this summer. It will be incorporated into the construction in the fall. The building is slated for occupancy in the spring of 2006.