Arts Imbalance  •  A temporary art installation above Boston’s Fort Point Channel  •  2012

Selected as the Fort Point Arts Community's 2012 Floating Art installation, this piece highlighted the precarious position of the area's several hundred artists facing the pressure of major redevelopment. A pair of larger-than-life-size figures—based on a classic articulated artist’s manikin and made from aluminum sheet skinned with refractive dichroic film—counterbalanced on a 320’ yellow rope strung between 2 bridge superstructures. The projected reflected close collaboration with Boston's City Engineer and Public Works Department, the Boston Art Commission, Boston Harbormaster, the US Coast Guard, and the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Funding came from the Friends of Fort Point Channel and Chapter 91 funds paid by developers as public-interest offsets.

A neighborhood artist reported the following overheard conversation: Three children and their parents were on the bridge studying Arts Imbalance and one of the children (a boy about 8?) said to his two younger sisters: "I think a Magician made that" His older sister replied, "Really?  But not Voldemort."  To which the little boy replied, "Oh no only a a very good magician could make something like that." The little girls shook their heads, and the smallest girl said, in a tiny and awed voice, "A very very good magician, who loves children and wants them to see magic."

[Photos 9, 10 & 11 by Raber Umphenour.]