District inherits art in facility transformation

By Danilynn Welniak/reporter

Trinity River Campus features hundreds of pieces of art, both professional and amateur. Campus administrators plan to display student works as well.

“Every piece of art is reflective of when and why,” said Thomas Fitzpatrick, NW Campus art associate professor, to humanities professors Feb. 6.

RadioShack President David Edmundson intended the art at the corporation’s Riverfront Campus to encourage people to use both sides of their brains, to evolve and to generate new ways to become innovative, relevant, ambitious and fun, Fitzpatrick said.

“This art collection represents interconnectedness and the natural world,” he said. “Most of the art is modular, containing multiple pieces that make up the whole.”

Two of the largest sculptures are “An Extravagance of Electronics by Kristina Lucas and “Gossamer Galaxies” by Michael Hayden. Ironically, these two artworks are a multitude of pieces that make one, just as the artists are two people who have come together in matrimony.

“An Extravagance of Electronics” hangs above the campus dining hall on a color-coded path that culminates in a red circular pattern.

Devon Nowlin, SE fine arts instructional assistant, explained the significance of Lucas’ sculpture.

“The red circles at the end represent the RadioShack logo,” she said. “During construction, Lucas actually gave each component playful names such as ‘Little Puffy’ and ‘Big Round Frog’ because they developed personalities.”

Matthew McCaslin’s “Things As They Are” constantly shows pictures of nature, such as the horizon, flowers and cattle on a power matrix of LCD TVs, DVD players and electrical components.

In an artist’s statement, McCaslin said he hoped to “create a sculpture where movement and pace of the multifaceted images would create a poetic experience that is contemplative, familiar and somehow bigger than the sum of its parts.”

Patrick Wilson’s Sonic is composed of 25 colored panels.

The components represent a visual soundwave and inside every panel are positioned pictures of speakers, amplifiers, tuners, turntables and even a transistor radio.

Fitzpatrick said it is important to pay attention to the perfection of the edges in this work and the way the color continues past the folds of the corners.

Thomas Burkhardt’s “Untitled” incorporates multiple modern technological items strung together with various abstract shapes in enamel on canvas.

“Burkhardt explained his piece as an effort to combine figurative and abstract languages in a nontraditional space,” Nowlin said.

His work ties in with all of the other pieces of artwork because it focuses on connectedness.

“The artwork in this campus’ collection is meant to create and represent new avenues of thinking,” Nowlin said.

“What is still here will remain on Trinity River Campus because it was made to be exhibited here,” she said.