Coming in 2024-2025.
During the summer of 2021, seven artists were selected for six public art commissions to be embedded within 2 of 12 different stations, to observe, and experience the lives of personnel from the Travis County’s Emergency Medical Services and The City of Austin’s Fire department.
After, design and fabricate a unique public artwork. I was one of them. I was assigned to two different stations for 3 months. The 12 stations are in the process to being extensively remodeled and will have a unique public art work made for them.
I have designed an indoor hanging lighted sculpture that is about 7ft in diameter. I will be located in the entrance atrium. It’ll essentially and large aluminum light pendant.
A house is essentially a box. It is a container for people to live in. The cube is a structure, a good representation of something routine, not complicated, ordinary but strong, dependable, and structured. A compound cube is a polyhedron that looks like something that could have evolved from a platonic solid. I chose this form because it evokes imagery of a physical folding of material into a star. Two cubes represent two houses that intersect and combine to create a star placed elevated above the ground at the entrance of the newly renovated AFD 25/ATCEMS 10 Station.
Most importantly this new 3-dimensional symbol of two houses combining to be more together than they are individually. There is an overlap of their shared ideals, goals, and a mission, to serve the greater good.
The symmetry and repeating geometry of the Star-Form parallels the 24-hour shift that is common to both EMS & AFD.
More about Embedded Artist Time.
During the summer of 2021, seven artists were selected to be embedded within 12 different stations, to observe, and learn about the unique line-of-work, of Travis County’s Emergency Medical Services and The City of Austin’s Fire department. I was one of them.
I had no expectations or preconceived ideas of what it would be like. I was there to observe and learn.
The time I spent with both ATCEMS and AFD personnel were different experiences with very different personalities. I learned how the two separate sides of the station, the ATCEMS and AFD functions in the same space and at the same time.
There were moments to have conversations, but each time they were interrupted by an odd sound, which I later learned was a box alarm tone signifying a call had come in. Everyone dropped everything and jumped into a truck rushing to somewhere where someone was having the worst moment of their life.
I witnessed urgency and effort to improve these moments, which happened all over the city many times in a day, with little to no pause in between. There was no time to think about it. The only thing was to just get ready for the next moment.
Who would want to do this? There are numerous stations around the city with trained personnel, on standby, ready to do this all day, all night, every day of the year, and I was given access to two of them.
During my embedded time, I witnessed privileged moments, that gave me insights into the depth of responsibilities of those entrusted with the mission of keeping the people of this city and county safe.
There are deeper aspects that are often not seen or overlooked by the public.
ATCEMS & AFD personnel see and deal with the difficult, uncomfortable, and darkest parts of most things, for everyone else to be able to live in the easy comfortable brilliance of a functional society.
I asked many Emergency personnel if they thought their job was dangerous and they would seem to not like the question or understand it. Many would answer that I was looking at it in the wrong way. They had been trained to deal with the eventuality of a situation going wrong. Every “danger” to them was just a problem to overcome.
There are many things that cause worry, anxiety, and fear, but with knowledge we can overcome them.
Learning to solve problems can change your perspective and approach. For example, they thought me to repair a car tire puncture, something that was anxiety inducing and stressful, became a minor annoyance once I learn how simple it was to fix. Skills and knowledge empower anyone overcome any difficulty or danger. For them, competence, readiness, and timing can be the difference between life and death, theirs, and ours.
Because of this, their work can be very self-validating and fulfilling. The initiated become part of an extended family built on trust, respect, and shared pain.
…
It has been several months (maybe years by the time you are reading this) since my last ride-along, it was an experience that will be with me for the rest of my life.
I’m very proud of the time I spent with them, as if the proximity of my project to them somehow changed the way I and others see me. It was validating to be able to see their work up-close. They taught me that anyone can be heroic with simple and mundane actions done competently and compassionately.
What most people don't know is the logistics, sacrifice, and lifestyle it takes to make this possible. The constant training and the methodical actions make it possible to tilt the laws of nature in our favor, to shrink time and space.
Time & Space is in everything.
How long does it take to get the other side of the city? How far is 500ft? When will help arrive? How far is the sun from Earth? Space is fundamentally entangled with time. It takes time to traverse any space as a distance to be covered in the shortest possible time. Collisions and rescues happen in seconds and minutes but change lives for years and decades.
Felt like obstacles to everything we do in our lives, Time and space are unrelenting and eternal constraints of our existence. From the micro-seconds in the quickness of a reflex, to the seconds and minutes of the pulse of the beat of our blood and heart, to the hours in the length of a day, and to the expanse of years in decades, Time is measured in many ways. There are many ways to divide a day. A day, a whole day, is a whole rotation of the earth, divided into 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. The world will complete 365 times whole rotations as it orbits once around our star.
About The Sun & Stars
Sun and Star are different names for functionally the same entity with the same properties, different only by context.
Our star’s gravity holds our solar system together. Our star is not a very big star, compared to other stars, but it makes life possible for us. A star is seemingly eternal, a perpetual light in the sky. Our sun will one day become a red star, an old star, a dying star, and what once gave us warmth and light will engulf us in its fire.
An unlikely symbol of life and death, the sun can embody harsh contrast of opposites.
It is a stellar hot light in the cold vacuum of space, a balance of opposites, making life possible. Our sun is the ultimate symbol of fire and light. Ironically, it is a star, an ultimate symbol of the night. The sun has always been a primordial and ancient symbol of safety that ends the cold and terrors of the night. As warm daylight breaks every morning, a new day with a renewed hope and new possibilities begins.
The personnel of the Fire department & EMS watch over our city through the night that becomes a new day. As if in a tidally locked orbit, they are committed to every call, to their duty, their training, and their traditions. They are locked in for one shift, one rotation, every few days, for years, and a lifetime. The way they experience the world in its broad spectrum between opposites of safety and danger, comedy and tragedy, and life and death.
Concept.
In many of my projects, I try to reimagine the subject in an ideal form or state that is universal and hopeful. My observations during my embedded time were distilled to a few core concepts as the seeds for the design of this new artwork.
The subject matter of the artwork are rudimentary facts that are profoundly meaningful about the two institutional entities under one roof with an intersecting duty and service to the city.
My goal was to show this by creating a symbolic overlapping of their mutual values and ideals. Most importantly, I wanted to identify the fundamental challenge faced by both organizations in an elemental form.
The patterns I chose for the surface are representational of the entanglement of the fundamental obstacles of Time and Space.
Lines, strings, circles, intersections, connections, boundaries, areas, and orbits are concepts we use to imagine and manage Space. The wavy lines are reminiscent of marbled stone, rivers, water, wood grain, arteries, heat, fire, are all things that are governed by growth and time.
A New Shared Symbol.
The Maltese cross & The Star of life are the symbols that represent the calling and duty that both organizations uphold. I want to add a new symbol for the joined efforts of the AFD and EMS that unites them. After many iterations, I found a form, that looks outwardly complex, but it is simple in concept.
A house is essentially a box. It is a container for people to live in. The cube is a structure, a good representation of something routine, not complicated, ordinary but strong, dependable, and structured. A compound cube is a polyhedron that looks like something that could have evolved from a platonic solid. I chose this form because it evokes imagery of a physical folding of material into a star. Two cubes represent two houses that intersect and combine to create a star placed elevated above the ground at the entrance of the newly renovated AFD 25/ATCEMS 10 Station.
Most importantly, this is a new 3-dimensional symbol of two houses combining to be more together than they are individually. There is an overlap of their shared ideals, goals, and a mission to serve the greater good.
The symmetry and repeating geometry of the Star-Form parallels the 24-hour shift that is common to both EMS & AFD.
A cube has 6 faces. Two cubes have 12 faces. In this new combined form, there are 36 faces. 12 faces on top and 12 faces on the bottom and 12 faces at the equator. These faces numerically parallel the 24 hours of a day, as well as the 12 months in a year.
The color scheme and materials I have chosen are meant to embody strength, structure, and the cycle of night and day. The light that will fill the space represents the calm and hope they radiate for the public. It will be there to represent the organized and complex continuous effort that it takes to have safety and peace in the city.
Placement on site.
The sculpture site will be in the two-story vestibule public entrance of the new station. It will be suspended about 13.5’ ft from the ground and hanging about 5.6’ ft from the lowers part of the pitched ceiling. The artwork will be visible from the Duval Rd. facing window, which is approximately 12ft by 7ft, and the East facing storefront window which is approximately 12ft by 12 ft. The placement of will be centered north & south and slightly closer to the east-facing window, allowing it to be seen from the outside of the building.
Viewed from the outside through the windows or inside, the artwork will have a presence that will activate and occupy the interior space. In the vestibule, it will greet the public, but it will also be a beacon to the personnel as they descend or ascend to and from the second floor.
Structural Design.
The visual mechanical aspect of the artwork reflects its pragmatic durable construction and shares the intrinsic aesthetics of the station, its machines, and the work that is done within.
The dimensions for this suspended sculpture will be based on 4.5’ ft side edges of the cubes, giving the combined form an approximate 7.5’ ft diameter.
The patterns on the surface will be cut out of thin sheets of aluminum and backed with frosted clear sheets. The light of the sculpture will glow from the interior LED lights that will be on a dedicated circuit.
The underlying aluminum and steel structure under the exterior skin is a midplane that is an attachment for the 12 three-faced-cube-corner shapes that attach to the midplane structure and anchor to the center pole.
The weight is approximately 600 lbs. and will be attached to the steel joist of the ceiling.
Dedication.
This sculpture is dedicated to the men and women of Engine 11, 25 and Medic 10. I wanted to create a physical form that commemorated the stories that will happen at this newly renovated station 25. They each had their own separate part of the station and now they are united in a new station.
The title of this artwork, “Two Live by A Star”, is a play on words. The “two” are the two organizations that will be living with this star in their new station. It is also a visual metaphor. A star is a symbol of a higher code and purpose to strive for. It is a fixed point to navigate our lives by. That is what each station is, a fixed point in its community.
Values define who you are. I want this artwork to honor and symbolize the daily embodiment and execution of ideals, efforts, and continuous sacrifice of the joint mission that is carried out by Austin’s Fire Department and Travis county’s Emergency Medical Services. They are two organizations upholding joint ideals of service to the public, one day at a time, making them more alike than they are different. They are two that live by the same star.