Dawn
DeDeaux
New Orleans, LA
From her New Orleans base, interdisciplinary artist DeDeaux has merged art with new technologies for four decades. She is a photographer, sculptor, writer, publisher, educator, and was a co-founder of New Orleans’ Contemporary Arts Center (CAC). DeDeaux’s recent projects have included The Goddess Fortuna and her Dunces, as part of Prospect.2 New Orleans (2011), and the current Thumbs Up for the Mothership at Mass MoCA (through 2019). DeDeaux's Swope Park installation repurposes fragments of John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost by wrapping text around dozens of columns that appear as the final remnants of a ruined city.
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Begin by Shelter 2 at Swope Park
Viewing Hours:
Unlimited Viewing
Dawn DeDeaux
FREE FALL: Prophecy and Free Will in Milton’s Paradise Lost
Medium: Wood, Concrete, Applique, and Lighting
FREE FALL is a large-scale sculpture installation by New Orleans-based artist Dawn DeDeaux created for Kansas City's international art venue OPEN SPACES led by veteran Artistic Director Dan Cameron. The work tributes Paradise Lost by John Milton published in 1667, considered among the world's most important literary offerings. Selections from the epic poem appear on 48 concrete columns, installed at angles as though in a state of fall throughout a quarter mile section of the majestic Swope Park. The text is generated in highway reflective vinyl to offer distinctive appearances that vary from day to night: by day the text reads in subtle pearlescence typography; and by night the verse transforms into a glowing vibrancy before the light of cellphones and headlights of passing cars - creating a moving, ever-changing choreography of light and language.
The main installation is on a ridge in a walnut grove adjacent to the Starlight Theater and Kansas City Zoo (at the intersection of Zoo Drive and Starlight Road). At the top of the ridge a cluster of columns suggest an archeological ruin while others cascade down the ridge face. Additional columns are sited to offer a meandering, intimate walk at woods' edge for more accessible readings. Cellphone light both activates the columns' reflective properties and the barcodes applied to columns to prompt corresponding audio readings.
Begin by Shelter 2 at Swope Park
Viewing Hours:
Unlimited Viewing
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