Mixed media (optical fibre, acrylic, LED light source)
Viva Tree was commissioned and acquired by Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, an area influenced by Spanish arts and culture. It takes its name from the Spanish for ‘live’ or ‘life’ and expresses the new beginnings of the building for which it was commissioned. At the time I had been working with Morse Code for a number of years and realised that the dots and dashes of code could be translated into an infinite number of two- and three-dimensional forms. Each of Viva Tree’s 320 acrylic rods are etched with the words Vision and Honour, pertinent to the university motto. The resulting light installation is simply one word abstracted into a series of engraved ‘V’ grooved prisms that spiral out in branch-like clusters from a central core.
