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Tree Rings
MATERIALS: LED lights and fixtures, wood, aluminum, hardware
DIMENSIONS: 48” x 48” x 8” each
LOCATION: Skowhegan, ME
COMMISSIONING AGENCY: Self-funded gift to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
DATE: 2021
Tree Rings is a site-specific sculpture for a lakeside tree on the campus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Comprised of three illuminated rings that hang from separate branches, it plays off the appearance of lighted marquee signs and letters from the turn of last century. By taking them out of an urban context––where they would have been used for advertising – and installing them in a natural setting, these glowing shapes begin to speak towards something more decorative, nostalgic, and possibly spiritual.
White Line
MATERIALS: fluorescent fixtures and bulbs, steel cable, power source
DIMENSIONS: 225’ / 175’ / 240' long
LOCATION: Durham, England / Tokyo, Japan / Banner, WY
COMMISSIONING AGENCY: Artichoke / US Embassy / Jentel Artist Residency
DATE: 2017 / 2007 / 2005
White Line consists of a line of fluorescent fixtures and bulbs strung along a cable. When viewed outdoors, fluorescent light is strangely similar to moonlight. Yet the shadows and highlights it creates are almost supernatural in their appearance, transforming the landscape into a psychedelic wonderland. Versions of White Line have been created between two hills on a cattle ranch in Wyoming, over a Japanese garden in Tokyo, and most recently over a river in Northern England.
ARTIST
Adam Frelin (b.1973, Grove City, PA) has shown widely at venues such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and College Art Association. Frelin has completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell Colony, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, Fine Arts Work Center, and Yaddo, among others. He has published two books of photography and has had several public artworks commissioned throughout the world. Most notably, he and his team were award a $1 million Public Art Challenge grant through Bloomberg Philanthropies to be lead artist on Breathing Lights, a multi-city temporary art installation that involves illuminating abandoned buildings with a breathing effect created with light.
Frelin received a BFA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and an MFA University of California, San Diego. Currently he is an Associate Professor of art at the SUNY University at Albany, and lives in Troy, NY.