Two faculty and two alumni from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis are among the winners of InSITE 2020, a temporary public art exhibition organized by the Downtown STL Public Art Initiative.
Established in 2018, the Public Art Initiative is a partnership between the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis (RAC), Explore St. Louis and Downtown STL, Inc. The winning artists will receive funding of $12,000 to $30,000, with approved artworks going on display beginning in spring 2020.
Van Dyck Murphy Studio — the experimental practice co-founded by Kelley Van Dyck Murphy, assistant professor of architecture, and her husband, Jonathan, who earned a bachelor’s degree in 2001 and master’s degrees in 2007 — will create “Sine Screen,” a digitally designed and fabricated exploration of architectural ornament in the form of a 3D-printed masonry screen wall. The project will explore the role of emerging digital technologies with an understanding of the methods by which humans have been constructing buildings for millennia.
Tim Portlock, associate professor and chair of undergraduate art, will project a series of multistory scaled animations on downtown buildings. The subject matter for each animation will be the obscured history of each building, carefully researched through local archives to share the building’s significance to the city.
Jenny Murphy, a 2009 alumna, will contribute “The Department Co.,” an installation transforming storefront windows into illustrative murals that will serve as the backdrop for pop-up events. The project is designed to engage pedestrians and explore how community members might play more active roles in defining and creating St. Louis culture.
Rounding out the five winners are public artist Ellie Balk and sculptor Jacob Stanley. For more information about InSITE 2020, visit the RAC website.
