| For more information about this article or gallery, please call the gallery phone number listed in the last line of the article, "For more info..." |
September Issue 2007
Center for Craft, Creativity and Design in Hendersonville, NC, Features Works by Michael Singer
The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design in Hendersonville, NC, is presenting the exhibit, Designs for a Sustainable Future, featuring works by Michael Singer, on view through Oct. 20, 2007. The exhibition includes enlarged photographic images, drawings and models of Singer's projects demonstrating creative solutions to urban infrastructure demands worldwide.
Thinking Green is not new for artist/designer/planner Michael Singer. He has transformed infrastructure projects that communities need to survive - the power plant, landfill, waste treatment facility - into attractive public spaces. He challenges us to consider "Can we live with what sustains us?" Are there ways to treat waste water that also enhance the environment and landscape? Can a power company be green?
Singer's work in the area of public infrastructure began in the early 1990's when he received to public art commission to work in the design of the massive solid waste treatment recycling and transfer station in Phoenix, AZ. The completed project was applauded by the Architectural Record, Landscape Architecture and even Governing magazine and was chosen one of the top eight design events of the year by the New York Times in 1993. His concepts for the facility were revolutionary, reducing the cost of construction and transforming it into not only an educational venue but also a tourist draw.
Singer began as an artist/sculptor with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His work resides in prestigious collections throughout the US and abroad, including New York's Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art. Throughout the 1970's and 1980s Singer's work opened new possibilities for outdoor and indoor sculpture, contributing to the definition of site specific art and the development of public places.
From 2002-2005, Singer was the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Arts, School of Arts and Letters, Florida Atlantic University where he now serves as the Special Advisor to the Dean. His work over the last fifteen years has been instrumental in transforming public art, architecture, landscape and planning projects into successful models for urban and ecological renewal.
In 1994, Singer completed a sculptural floodwall and walkway that serves as a model river reclamation project for the Grant River East Bank in Grand Rapids, MI.
Singer's design of air and water purification gardens for the Institute for Forestry and Nature (Alterra, IBN) Holland, has been featured in many journals as one of the leading examples of aesthetically outstanding green sustainable design.
With support from the Rockefeller Foundation Singer led a multidisciplinary team with the environmental group River Watch Network on the Master Plan for Troja Island Basin in Prague, Czech Republic.
Singer's designs, defined as an "Urban Eco-Sustainable Network", including habitat creation, education, recreation, water preservation, and urban agriculture as part of the electric generation facility building and site, are apparent in two recent projects: AES Londonderry's New Hampshire Cogeneration Facility buildings and Trans Gas Energy's Greenpoint, Brooklyn site.
The recently opened AES Londonderry, New Hampshire Cogeneration Facility buildings site and surrounding land holdings ($400 million) was designed by a team led by Singer. The Singer Team design identified many strategies by which the facility will set a new standard for the power industry, making this power facility an asset to its social fabric. As a result of Singer's work for AES, several companies in the electric power industry have engaged him to work on new facility design.
The Singer Team developed the design for Trans Gas Energy's Greenpoint, Brooklyn site. The Singer Team design is included in the New York State Article 10 Regulatory Application. The design reveals many exciting possibilities for integrating the facility water and waste heat systems into design and programs that are amenities to the community.
After this exhibit ends, Designs for a Sustainable Future, will be on view at UNC Asheville's Highsmith Gallery in Asheville, NC, from Oct. 23 through Nov. 13, 2007.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Center at 828/890-2050 or visit (www.craftcreativitydesign.org).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing
Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2007 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts
from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts
Online, Copyright© 2007 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved
by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use
without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina
Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.