Brilliant Corners

Peloton Building, Portland, Oregon
2016
Ash, fir, hemlock, walnut, white oak
16' x 14' x 6"
Commissioned by Security Properties and the Regional Arts & Culture Council

Brilliant Corners is a high-relief wood sculpture in the lobby of the Peloton building in North Portland. Its handmade shapes abstractly trace the contours of living bodies moving through space. The building's design centers on contemporary bicycle commuter culture, and the peloton, the pack of riders moving together in a race, was our starting point. The same forms recur throughout the natural world: birds in formation, schools of fish, the migrations of people and animals.

The site added another layer. The surrounding neighborhood was once the heart of a vibrant Black community and a major West Coast center of jazz in the 1940s and 50s, home to many of the musicians celebrated today. In recent decades it has seen heavy gentrification and the displacement of longtime residents. That often-overlooked history led us to Thelonious Monk's 1957 album Brilliant Corners, whose music became our guide for visualizing form and movement. The finished work has a playful, liquid quality that seems to outrun the wood it is made from, much as Monk's record changed how music could be heard.