Between the Ocean and the Sky, installed at the Bellingham Public Works Operations Center, grew out of an impression of Bellingham as a place in which the natural forces that shaped its surrounding landscape are still present and palpably felt today.

I started from a few simple questions about how I could make a sculpture that engaged with my ideas about the project as well as the spatial conditions in the building. Can I harness the physical energy of a river within a sculpture? What would that look and feel like and how would those forms interact with the surrounding architecture? I was curious to make an artwork that started as a somewhat controlled bas-relief on the staircase wall and then jumped off into three-dimensional space to become a wild thing that filled the lobby and could feel beautiful and overwhelming at the same time.  What might it feel like to stand under the sculpture and witness this moment of departure? 

The form of the sculpture is inspired by the mirrored structure of the Nooksack river that gathers up its water like threads from creeks in the North Cascades and winds its way through lowland canyons, floodplain and waterways that change over time before once again dispersing into small alluvial channels in Bellingham Bay. The sculpture serves as a physical metaphor for a City that seems to reach out into the mountains and bay that define its borders.