"Peace" at UCF

March 30, 2018

“Peace” was created with a desire to interact with the environment. To fully interact with the environment, organic and man-made objects had to collaborate within the same space. The environment that was created with “Peace” allowed a space for busy college students to take in nature and sound; the space itself was one of relaxation and a space to get away from the stress of classes and college life. The installation lent beauty to the environment by creating a wind chime effect when it interacted with the wind.

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The site was specific to the creation of “Peace”. Originally “Peace” was meant to hang from the tree outside of the University of Central Florida Visual Arts Building, but due to concerns for the trees health the site changed to a free standing structure. The artist still wanted to focus on the large tree and nature, so the freestanding structures were moved to create a diagonal line from the tree to the sidewalk. The goal was to create a bridge from the sidewalk to the tree using the three man-made structures.

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The wine bottles also mimicked natural life in the way they moved, swayed, and created a soothing noise, similar to nature and leaves. “Peace” succeeded in using positive and negative space to communicate and mimic the natural world. Both the colors of the glass and the colored PVC pipe mimicked the colors around it from the grass, leaves and to tree itself. Another successful abstraction of nature occurred with the layering of each bottle creating an abstraction of how leaves naturally grow on a tree. Also the installation created movement from the sidewalk to the tree with it’s size and spacing within the large grassy area. The smallest structure created a line from the ground to the tallest structure, to the even taller tree in the background. The PVC pipe also mimicked metal in its coloring, showing that it could be a more permanent structure.