Williams Center Art Gallery

April 1–June 10, 2005
Stacy Levy
Blue Lake

Stacy Levy typically focuses on themes such as water, wind, tides, pollution, and decay; her works tell the stories of specific sites and their intersection of ecological and cultural influences. Her Lafayette installation, a project she has had in mind for several years, is a departure. Blue Lake will not be a representation of an existing lake, nor use materials from an existing body of water. Using 3,000 waist-high steel rods, blue vinyl discs, and a particleboard floor—not unlike some materials used in Urban Oldfield, 1998, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, ICA, Philadelphia, where she created a full-scale “diagram” of what plant life would have existed on the lot if the ICA had not been built—she created a shimmery blue lake that invites visitors interaction.

Kathy Bruce, author of the catalogue essay on Levy’s Blue Lake, writes [Levy’s work] brings to our attention the invisible, giving form to the natural resources in the world around us. She presents visual scientific concepts to be absorbed intellectually, visually, and poetically without moralizing. Blue Lake is her most psychological installation to date for it requires the viewer to activate the piece both physically—by moving through the space of waist deep undulating blue discs and psychologically by asking them to engage their perceptions through the use of visual memory. In this respect, Blue Lake evokes the natural world rather than explains it and therein lies its mystery. Levy describes her installation, ‘like a mirage representing a longing for water, and the absence of a perfect blue lake in our landscape.’ In keeping with Lucy Lippard’s notion that ‘One of arts function is to recall that which is absent-whether as history, or the unconscious form or social justice.’ Levy creates a sense of undisturbed beauty, of unmanipulated science and by so doing, shows us the crucial necessity to put our relationship to nature in order. Blue Lake could be viewed as a refuge for the modern spirit; a return to the simplicity of Nature and the antithesis to our chaotic, destructive concrete modernity.

Levy, who has an MFA in sculpture from Tyler School of Art at Temple University, combines art, science in her work. She minored in forestry as an undergraduate sculpture major at Yale and is trained in environmental science and landscape architecture. For Testing the Waters, Acid Mine Drainage and Art at Vintondale, Pennsylvania, 2002, she was part of a team creating a park for acid mine drainage (AMD) water treatment. (AMD occurs when rainwater comes into contact with the coal on the surface and in the walls of abandoned coal mines, creating acid water.) She has described the Vintondale project as a “piece of art also working as a water treatment plant.”

Water—whether rain, river, or lake—has long been an important element in her work. She collected water from the Delaware, Schuylkill, and Cooper Rivers and 39 tributaries to create Watercourse, 1996, an installation at University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Eight thousand clear plastic cups on the gallery floor, in three different sizes, mapped the Delaware River and its tributaries to-scale. The cups’ sizes indicated rivers, creeks, or streams, and were filled with water from corresponding bodies of water. Empty cups represented creeks that no longer existed. As water evaporated and was refilled, different-colored residue was left behind—visual evidence of algae and other organisms in the water.

For Cornerstones, 1997, 32 pavers were sandblasted with images of aquatic or terrestrial microorganisms found at nearby Lake Union and set into a Seattle sidewalk. Levy worked with mold and algae again to created microfloral designs with the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia and Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Four sinks, connected with plumber’s pipe in Hidden River, 1990, represented four municipalities which receive drinking water from the Schuylkill—“hidden river” in Dutch—River. The pipes created an accurate map of the Schuylkill from the headwaters to the Delaware River, in addition to representing a hidden “river” of pipes which carry water through houses. Water circulated through the system during the installation period.

She recently completed Waterlines, 2004, at the Collingswood and Westmount, New Jersey, stations for the Delaware River Port Authority PATCO line, Art in Transit program. Earlier this year she tested a prototype for the proposed Tide Flowers, Saline Gradient for Hudson River Park, Piers 25 and 26, New York City, with Sasaki Associates. For an earlier river project, Levy, artist Winifred Lutz, and Delta Group Landscape Architects designed Confluences: Flows of the Schuylkill for Schuylkill River Park in Philadelphia.

Levy’s recent one-person gallery/indoor exhibitions have been at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wis.; University of Texas at San Antonio; and the ICA. She has been included in recent group exhibitions at Santa Fe Art Institute; Heinz Architectural Center, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany; and Mass MOCA, North Adams, Mass. She is represented by Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Pa.

Acknowledgments:

Stacy Levy was a pleasure to work with. Many thanks to those who worked on the installation including Stacy’s assistant Danielle Jones, Lafayette students Amanda Bochner ’05, Charles Felix ’08, Lai Huang ’07, Charles Jun ’08, Taryn Landers ’05, QiJie Lao ’08, Vanessa Araujo-Lopera ’08, and Lindsay O’Connor ’08; Mario Cozzubbo, Steve Kauth, Ron Morgan, and Mike Breiner of the College’s plant operations; and Kathy Bruce, author of the forthcoming essay on Levy’s Blue Lake.

Closing reception: Sunday, May 8 (Mother’s Day), 3:00–5:00 p.m. Visitors are invited to take a “bouquet” from the installation.

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