Art at Work

Creating Corporate Commissions

What does a business look like?

Is it a building?

a product?

a logo?

Businesses like to be recognized, and they will devote large amounts of time and money towards creating and maintaining a corporate identity. Some businesses, perhaps with a little more imagination - or a little more courage - take the extra step and commission original art for their buildings. As a glass artist, I can only encourage this.

Architectural glass in corporate and commercial space can take any form you can imagine, and doing this kind of work has given me some of my most interesting challenges as a glass artist - as well as some surprises.

I once created a glass mural for an investment firm - a reverse-painted piece, with gold and copper leaf and fragments of mirror. When I visited the clients a year later, they expressed their delight with the work and its recent “performance”. Apparently, as they entered the offices late one night, they caught a glimpse in the reflective glass of three intruders dodging into another room. With this warning, they were able to retreat and call police without being seen, and the thieves were summarily arrested. Of course I had created the work to be a meaningful and valuable contribution to the client’s environment - but I never thought that the benefits would be quite so tangible. They clearly felt that this work, “The Magic Highway”, had already repaid their investment!

My first large corporate commission, entitled “All That Glitters”, was created for Scotia Plaza, a large downtown office tower in Toronto. One of the building’s underground levels features a large food court, through which commuters must pass on their way to the subway. The designers of the food court had done much to avoid the artificially lit dreariness that can prevail in these spaces. The interior featured tile, well-designed black lacquered fittings, and a varied and creative lighting scheme. One of the design problems they hadn’t yet solved was what to do with a large wall that surrounded the central elevator shafts. This wall, totalling 1200 square feet, bordered the path that thousands of people would take on the way from their offices to the subway. My role was to create a work, integrated into the interior design of the space, that would add interest and life, while creating a visual statement on behalf of the client.

In preliminary discussions, the designers were very interested in using glass, but agreed that without natural light, the site wasn’t appropriate for a traditional leaded glass treatment. Backlit leaded glass would be too static, and would present serious maintenance and safety problems in such a high traffic area.

As I considered the requirements of the site, I began to work with the idea of large, tempered and treated mirrors, backed with gold and copper to reflect and diffract the lighting in the space. I had seen examples of similar techniques on a smaller scale - most notably in Jerusalem, where some of the Islamic art used gold leaf on glass. More recently, I had seen some experimental pieces by artist Nada Healy that used sandblasted and painted mirror. Developing these techniques to work on the scale demanded by this piece required experimentation with resists and gold size, but I soon refined the techniques to where they would succeed in a high traffic, high visibility setting.

In presenting the design to the clients we needed to achieve several things at once: we had to make them visualize a work that was unlike anything they had ever seen; we had to show them how this work would fit with and complement the existing design of the space; and we had to satisfy their practical concerns, by showing them that in addition to being visually interesting, the work would be securely mounted, easy to maintain, and virtually indestructible.

The negotiations around this commission were based on three or four meetings, during which I displayed some of my previous work, presented the mural design, showed them samples of the proposed techniques, and answered their many questions.

Once the contract was signed, our time frame for creating the work was remarkably short. Working to deadline, in collaboration with painter Michael Poulton, we completed and installed the mural in five weeks.

The mural walls total 120 feet long by 10 feet high. It was created using 32 glass panels of 6mm tempered mirror. A beeswax resist was splattered on the mirror backing, and all the remaining mirror was sandblasted off. This left us with a sandblasted surface to paint on with acrylic and oils (Fig 3). An oil-based gold size was used and a combination of gold, copper and silver leaf applied. A 3/4 inch thick kneewall was built around the three walls, and the panels were mounted on this, held together with aluminum mirror channels. “All That Glitters” is a mural about everyday city life and work life. Fragments of mirror add a wonderful kinetic element to the artwork as people pass by. The gold, copper and silver leaf return considerable light to the eye in this artificially lit space. The techniques I used have proved exceptionally durable and adaptable to numerous types of architectural challenges. I’ve used them in many subsequent commissions.

Corporate commissions can be very rewarding. The variety and openness of aesthetic approaches, and clients’ willingness to consider new ideas, make this one of the most exciting and innovative of fields.

One artist who has been very successful in creating meaningful work in corporate settings is David Wilson. Part of this success comes from a deep understanding of how his work fits within the bigger picture, which includes client, architect, users and the building itself.

My interest in creating glass art for buildings, is to develop a building component on a large scale. I think it can enrich an environment that people use everyday. It’s a way to really do something with the corporate environment, and a statement as to purpose. It’s humanizing. Glass art in corporate buildings can also reinforce corporate identity, and that can be its biggest advantage.

This understanding underlies a strong collaborative approach, which helps to ensure that the final design will meet the needs of everyone involved.

The key element to the success of my collaborations with architects, I think is a willingness to listen and to try to adapt my design approach to each different project as it comes along. As a glass artist and designer I have to realize that every project has its own set of problems and set up a design program or parameters for that particular situation. Listening and being responsive to the needs of the client and the goals of the architect is a prerequisite. Architects need to be reassured that there are glass designers who, working with them, see themselves as part of a collaborative process to solve a problem. I work with architects as a team rather than as somebody who’s coming in to impose his will from the outside and make only a personal statement.

An example of David Wilson’s creative response to problems is seen in his work on the renovation of the Corning, Inc. offices in New York City. Wilson was asked to develop a design for the boardroom, which on one side looked out at an abysmal black wall, while another side provided a fine view across Fifth Avenue. Originally, there was only to be glass at the part that looked out to the wall; but working with the space, and with the architect’s request for the glass design to tie the room together, Wilson developed a modular screen system that resolved the unbalanced exterior views. (Fig 5 & 6) Like all of Wilson’s work, the piece goes far beyond just being a design solution. Within the modular screen-style framing system exists a geometric-based design - a grid structure that dissolves and evolves in a gentle, delicate palette of color and texture.

David Wilson’s creative approach also shows up in his presentation models, which are a powerful tool in helping clients to visualize the proposed work.

I have always been intrigued with model-making. There’s a tradition in my family for it as a hobby. When I started working with glass at Rambusch, I started making models of the interiors of the buildings we were working on. Now it has become part of the process of design, particularly for scale. It works on two levels. It’s a design tool initially and ultimately a sales tool. It facilitates an understanding of a space that hasn’t yet been built, and it is a great way to study how that space is actually going to work with glass.

Innovative design processes also mark David Wilson’s work. For the installation at Merck & Co., Inc. world headquarters in New Jersey, Wilson worked with a friend who had a die-cutting factory. In order to build the screens in the model form, with space in between so he could move stained glass transparencies in and out again, he had frame sections die-cut, and then glued them all together. With hundreds of bits of screen punched out of cardboard and different materials to see which would work best, he was able to assemble an elegant glass screen of oriental simplicity. (See Wind’s Eye in this issue for further examples of David Wilson’s work.)

All that glitters is not gold. Many corporations know this, and these enhance their buildings and their images immeasurably by commissioning art. Glass artists who understand the unique requirements, challenges and opportunities of this type of work will reap the benefits.