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Foreverglades
Barbara Neijna
Concourse J, Second Level (past Security Checkpoint)
Foreverglades is a conceptual work of art enveloping the interior walls, floors and aesthetic environment of the Concourse. It is a massive, three-football-fields-long art installation creating an exceptional sense of place. As stated in the first words from the book, The Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, “There are no other Everglades in the World,” the artist’s intention was to create art in a public space that is unique to South Florida and could not occur elsewhere. The installation can be appreciated and understood over a long stay of time, delving into the multi-layering of context and content, or it can be taken in at a fleeting pace, catching a word or two of the terrazzo text or a splash of color from the curtain wall glass.
Text from River of Grass is embedded into 65,000 square feet of terrazzo, from beginning to the end of the concourse. Along the terrazzo floor, interspersed with the text, are squares of color photographs taken in the Everglades. The individually and hand-made pre-cast stone relief panels (charcoal panels on the walls) are on-site castings of fossilized materials and flora from the Everglades. Many of the bas-relief panels contain embedded memorabilia of elements of South Florida. There are embedments of fossils 200 million years old. There is glass and mirror, cornhusks from an Indian village, and sharks teeth, beads and pure color in tiny boxes to name just a few. Included in the vast variations of surface and texture is iconography of conceptual images and hand drawing relevant to the unique qualities of the area. All of this alludes to the air, light, earth and sea. There are 14,000 square feet of these panels, interlaced with 4,000 linear feet of non-repetitive photographic images taken in the Everglades and viewed through a hand-made acrylic magnifying lens. The photo-images beneath the lens appear to move, migrate and mutate as though the subjects were below water slowly transforming and ever changing as you walk by them. This work references our beginnings and our sustainable but fragile environment.
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