source: adriensegal

TIDAL DATUM of KACHEMAK BAY is a public art sculpture that was commissioned by the City of Homer, AK as part of the 1% for Art Funding program. It is a suspended sculpture that hangs above the entryway to the new Harbormaster Office Complex on the Homer Spit. The tidal range in Kachemak Bay is one of the greatest in the world. Tidal Datum is a data sculpture that represents a full cycle of tidal ebbs and floods in three dimensions. Twenty-nine daily tide charts of the verified water level recorded at the National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration’s tide station in Seldovia were translated into hand bent steel and framed in a wood structure made from walnut. At the lowest, the water level is 4’ below sea level and 21’ above sea level at its highest.”

Adrien Segal is a sculptural artist based in Oakland, CA. Her work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, and is published in several books and academic journals, including Boom: A Journal of California, Data Flow 2 and Arid Journal. She has been an Artist in Residence at many places, including the Bunnell Street Art Center in Alaska, Oregon College of Arts and Crafts in Portland, Autodesk’s Pier 9 Workshop in San Francisco, and Bullseye Glass in Emeryville, CA.

Adrien has held Visiting Artist positions at San Diego State University and at California College of the Arts, where she holds a BFA in Furniture Design. In addition to teaching, she pursues her creative practice out of her studio on the former Naval Base in Alameda, CA.

Scientific conventions are founded on the belief that we must systematically eliminate emotional involvement in order to uncover truths about the natural world. As a result, I feel a deep disconnect from nature and a great loss of intuitive knowledge. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that integrates scientific research, data visualization, history, landscape, and materiality, my work uses scientific data as a conceptual resource.

Sculpture is the means by which I reconcile conventions of reason and fact with an intuitive and emotive experience. I interpret the complex poetics of statistical information by translating data into lines, forms, and materials to reveal trends, patterns, and changes in the landscape that occur over time. Layers of tangible information are communicated intuitively as a refined and contextual physical experience from which knowledge can be elicited.