Role: Technical project management, CAD modeling, rigging

Part of SXSW 2019’s official selection in their Art program, Alex Darby and I spent a better part of a year streamlining Lisa Park‘s Blooming from the complex system we installed at Mana Contemporary to one that could be installed in under 36 hours in a conference room at the Austin Hilton.  

Since we tested everything in New York a month before the festival, our hurdle was the artificial grass we ordered arrived in the form of used astroturf cut into mismatched strips.  It looked like it’d lined a bar’s outdoor space for multiple events.  The recent rains meant all the local sod farms were back ordered for a few weeks.  But in the last hours I got through an international company that does the artificial grass for the Superbowl.  I was able to order a fresh roll of the nicest artificial grass I’ve ever seen.  They even ‘fluffed’ the grass with a gas-powered lawn mower looking tool to set how the blades stood and which side would be shiny versus matte.

Special thanks to Liz Whittington at SXSW for all the support.