Congress Square

That same year, my son Christopher helped me design and fabricate a new commission for Congress Square Park. We decided to use three thirty-foot light poles positioned along the west side of the park’s open space.

Like the Boothby Square installation, each Light Form was a different shape and size. Christopher introduced the idea of fabricating asymmetrical Light Forms. Up to that point I had only created symmetrical forms. He developed formulas to produce the asymmetrical shapes, and we also made symmetrical forms within forms—nineteen in total.

As with Boothby Square, the installation was multicolored, but the attachment to the poles was different. The forms contain inner tubing, like beads, and we used stainless steel aircraft cable to thread sets of five Light Forms together and suspend them from brackets along the poles.

When it came time to install the work, city employee Kevin Thomas fabricated the brackets for the poles and helped us put everything in place.

The installation remained there until 2014, when the park renovation expanded the space. The Friends of Congress Square Park asked me to redesign the installation using the nine trees surrounding the park. In 2017 the Light Forms were reconditioned with new lights and reinstalled in Lincoln Park, where they now illuminate the trees like chandeliers.