NEWS
Boston Children’s Hospital
June 2021
In May 2020 I received an email from L’Attitude Art expressing interest in some pieces they saw on my Etsy page. L’Attitude Gallery had been located on the 2nd floor at Thayer Street, Boston but have since moved to 11 Braintree St, Suite 213 in Alston. They were interested in commissioning something to be installed at The Boston Children’s Hospital. I suggested they consider Agam Totem Pole, a 5’ x 1’ piece with 5 stacked arrangements made from my largest parts arranged over colorful graphic imagery. I was intended to be a tryptich and I had started working on #2 & #3 in December but had stopped going to my studio in March due to the Covid year of isolation. It turned out to be just the incentive I needed to get back to work and eventually my dining room transformed into my work space.
The work is named for Jacob Agam the 93 year old kinetic artist who was part of the Op Art movement. I alter and enhance the saturation of a fragment of his work to use for the surface.
Together we decided on the color scheme for one of the pieces. They asked how I would feel if they were mounted horizontally and said the work would have to be covered with plexiglass in order to be safe for the hospital setting. This required some parts to be adjusted to a 2” maximum depth.
They were finished and picked up in December but because of Covid it was in June that I was notified they had been installed at 2 Brookline Place. You can only go see them on a specially arranged tour. I’m so happy I was able to complete this project during such a trying time.
HACKING THE ARTS
Feb 2019
We won 2nd Best All Around Hack!! the annual Hacking the Arts held at the MIT Media Lab. The team was made up of Yu-Ting Wang, (Industrial Design at Pratt) and Ziqing Li, (Computer Science at NYU), Casey McNulty (Interrelated Media at Mass Art) and Melissa (Art Ed, Mass Art). Their collaboration resulted in FLEX VR, an interactive Physical Therapy game-like environment that sends colorful blocks flying through the air when a movement is completed. Yu-Ting and Ziqing came with the VR equipment, experience and physical therapy concept, while Casey brought the creative design. Melissa's experience with "cell phone" elbow and the tedium of physical therapy contributed to the narrative and real life application that made it a compelling project. The concept combines an artistic VR experience with a medical need. With each rep the colorful blocks accumulate to build shapes, such as a tree, a mountain or even a puppy!