Archives: Projects

1,141 catenary chains descend from a suspended elliptical ring beam and return skyward on a new path, forming two shells of pattern and color. Appearing as a translucent three-dimensional painting, the work visually connects several levels and amplifies the aesthetics of light, reflection, and color.

Developed for the Hammer Museum’s annual K.A.M.P. (Kids’ Art Museum Project), this workshop invited children to make sculptural masks from paper pulp. Standard sheets of paper were blended into a slurry, colored with pigment, and molded into face-like forms using a platen shaped like a head. The dried results were taken home by participants.

For the Music Legs Glob Lamp we adapted materials and processes commonly used in the mass production of packaging to yield a series of lamps. Each lamp is a unique sculptural object. Paper pulp forms an integrated structure and skin, such that the only non-biodegradable components are the bulb housing and cord. A variant of our earlier Glob Lamp 01, which resembles the iconic head of a famous cartoon mouse or an abstraction of male or female anatomy, this series has a wider range of potential shapes. As with the subjective interpretation of clouds, the viewer can read different meanings in the forms of each lamp. Because of the unique fabrication process, no single lamp can be exactly reproduced.

Seventeen thousand segments of painted stainless steel ball chain, totaling over ten miles, form a thickened atmosphere of ghostly waves within a double-height entryway. The work is neither solid nor emptiness but has qualities of both, shifting in appearance with the viewer’s changing vantage point.

Cast from a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle and a late 1970s open-top speedboat, this installation transforms everyday objects into tools for fabrication and generators of architectural space. Multiple casts in recycled paper pulp were united into a structural whole, with the negative spaces left by the artifacts forming an occupiable mock tanning booth. The work challenges the contemporary architectural vogue for software-generated form by finding structure and meaning in the suburban landscape instead.

The Pavillon Spéciale is an installation designed and built by students of the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture under the direction of Ball-Nogues Studio. The installation can be arched and curled at full scale to form different types of space befitting the university’s summer program. The installation creates a sense of place while providing a respite from the sun and rain.

Comprising roughly 900 stainless steel spheres, this sculpture forms an abstracted mountain drawn from geological engineering concepts. Its shape echoes the surrounding Edmonton landscape, while its mirror surfaces reflect passing cars, weather, and light, drawing drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians into contemplative interaction.

Located in the barren desert, this synthetic earthwork doubled as a recreational amenity, its form standing 30 feet from rim to low point and depressed ten feet into the earth. Its rough plywood structure, originally formwork for another project, Talus Dome, resembles a basin. Rock climbing holds on the interior allow visitors to descend into a deep pool of salt water, evoking abandoned suburban pools and ramshackle homestead dwellings scattered across the Mojave.

A cascading diaphanous curtain of refractive beads attached to the inside of a glass tower wall, this work produces the effect of cathedral windows by transforming sunlight into light patterns that strike the sidewalk and building. At night it emits a gentle glowing presence, while the space between the chains permits views into the stairwell and to the sky beyond.

Comprised of hundreds of colored translucent plastic hand shapes linking together into chains, this installation continuously transforms the color of sunlight entering the Teen Center. Located directly behind storefront glass, it provides privacy from the street while producing the impression of human gestures through sequences of subtly varied hand forms.