Visitors to the new Butler Community College Welcome Center will want to make sure they look up as they enter the lobby.
Artist Stuart Allen, who lives in Texas, installed his kinetic art in the building earlier this week, having it ready in time for the grand opening.
The art, which is created out of fiber, wood and metal, is designed to move as the air around it circulates.
Allen was recommended for the project by Welcome Center architect Vince Haines, who attended college with Allen for a while.
The Butler Foundation then selected Allen for the project and raised the money to pay for the piece of art.
“I always enjoy projects where I get to work with the architectural space from the beginning,” he said.
Allen began working on the piece before ground was even broken for the building.
The design for the art was created in a CAD program, integrating the architect’s design for the building.
“It’s a piece that was built specifically for the Welcome Center,” Allen said.
Allen deviated a little from his usual materials, incorporating a stainless steel rod in with his usual materials of wood and fabric.
“A lot of my forms are kite-like,” he commented.
They also have a nautical aspect to them and he felt this rod added to that nautical feel.
“The spar is about 14 feet long and it allowed me to stretch the horizontal design,” he said.
The spar was the first part of the sculpture, with the rest built around that line.
He assembled and hung the three parts of the sculpture Sunday, then Monday worked on the final placement.
“They were a little farther apart,” he said of where they were originally hung. “I departed a little bit from the original design because I felt they would interact more dynamically with them closer.”
He enjoyed working on this project.
“It’s a nice space for one thing,” he said. “It was an opportunity to take a space an introduce an architectural element that changes how people look at the space.”
Allen studied architecture and how people move through a building, which he uses to see how his art will alter that.
“It is a visual shift in how people look at the space,” he said.
He also said the staff at the college were good to work with on the project.
This project also was a return home for Allen.
Although he now lives in San Antonio, he grew up in Wichita and used to teach sailing lessons, some of which were held at El Dorado Lake, between semesters in college.
In addition to sculptures, he also does photography. His works have been shown throughout the United States and abroad, with his pieces found in many private and public collections.
He began experimenting with kites in the early 1990s as a means to explore the relationship between wind and land.
