Article published September 27, 2009
3 major works of art grace new facility
Janine Ody-Miller has created images on large gold-tinted panels depicting events that will delight audiences here for years to come.
(
THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT
)
|
By TAHREE LANE
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Check out the piano sheet music for the 1928 song, “Sweet Lorainne,” a favorite of Toledo jazz pianist Art Tatum. It's etched into the lower right corner of the farthest-right glass panel hanging in the Lucas County Arena's north lobby.
Wearing a three-pound helmet with face shield, breathing through an air-feed, and wielding various nozzles, hoses, and guns, 116-pound Janine Ody-Miller painstakingly sandblasted each musical note and every line of the horizontal staffs.
“It was very intricate,” said Ms. Ody-Miller, who added she's thrilled to be part of the arena.
The sheet music is one of many images on 15 large, gold-tinted panels depicting entertainment that will delight audiences here for years to come. Hers is one of three major works of art that grace this new facility.
The largest is an upended keyboard-with-attitude. Rising 27 feet in the north plaza facing Madison Avenue, the $300,000 cost of the Art Tatum Celebration Column by California sculptor Cork Marcheschi was covered by a mix of public and private funds.
Another piece, a 50-foot-long topographic representation of the Maumee River, will be assembled from thousands of recycled blue and green post-consumer items (measuring cups, spoons, toys), by a trio of artists. Its $50,000 funding was just pinned down, and artists expect to have it completed and installed next to the escalator by summer.
A fourth piece of art didn't see the light of day. Environmental artist Jefre of Orlando worked with the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo on an inventive proposal, but it came in too late in the construction process, said Adam Russell, the commission's public art coordinator.
Ms. Ody-Miller decided to work with just one of the two colors of decorative glass — gold and icy blue — that are used throughout the arena. “I chose gold. I like its reflective quality. I thought it would brighten the location up a bit.”
Ten of the 15 panels are 64 inches tall by 48 inches wide and weigh 120 pounds each. They'll be wall-mounted in sets of two, one above the other, in a 20-foot-long row. Five larger panels — 69 inches tall by 48 inches wide and weighing 145 pounds each — will hang from the ceiling above the wall-mounted pairs.
Other images on the panels are the leg and torso of a beefy football player clutching pigskin and running; at his side is an X-and-O playsheet. A hockey player (No. 19 in a nod the Red Wings' great Steve Yzerman) shaves a spray of ice as he slides to a sideways stop.
A pair of circus horses prance; their manes braided, flowers at their ears. On top of one, a dog rides with a rooster on its back. Girls on trapezes swing, and ticket stubs drift down. Each golden panel is composed of two ¼-inch pieces laminated together, which limits Ms. Ody-Miller's sandblasting to 1/8-inch. “It's a little carving but mostly shading.”
From 115 artists who applied in August, 2008, seven were asked to create a maquette (a small-scale model) and present their ideas to a review committee in December. She was awarded the $40,000 job at year's end.
Californian Cork Marcheschi sculpted the Art Tatum Memorial Celebration Column.
(
THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH
)
|
As the arena took shape, her proposal morphed. She had planned a more than 60-foot row of consecutive panels, but it was abbreviated to a 20-foot line of five, with five more stacked above, and a top-most tier hanging above them.
“It was a substantial shift in design approach,” she said, noting that the more condensed, vertical grouping required her to place figures differently. “Each panel has to flow into the panel next to it.”
She showed drawings to an Arts Commission committee and test-etched them onto 12-inch-square pieces of glass. Using an overhead projector, she beamed her drawings onto contact-paper the size of the panels, onto which she traced the images.
She applied the contact paper to the panels and then tweaked the drawings with a fuscia-colored pencil. Using an X-Acto knife, she cut and removed portions to be blasted. For the sheet music, that weeding process took her and her mother, Virginia Ody, eight hours. Toledo Mirror and Glass moved the panels from her 14th Street studio to her workshop at her LaSalle, Mich., home, where her husband, John Miller, built a huge wooden structure on which the panels were set for sandblasting.
“Some areas are shaded, there's light carving, and different degrees of gradation from opaque frosting to translucence,” she said.
Contact Tahree Lane at:tlane@theblade.comor 419-724-6075.
Permanent Link
|
|
 |
|
Search
advertisement
