After spending weeks building an artwork 20 feet tall, a team of young artists has a singular wish for their completed project—for it to be struck by lightning.
Six students from George Mason University spent 10 days in Sugar Loaf, N.Y., this summer working on “Hyphen,” a 3-D artwork inspired by a painting of the same name by Kay Sage, a 20th-century surrealist artist.
The rectangular structure is painted in jewel tones and made out of lumber donated to the project after a nearby mill burned down. It stands on the grounds of the Seligmann Center in Sugar Loaf, about 50 miles from Manhattan.
The original plan was to construct the artwork out of recycled doors, said Mason School of Art professor Sue Wrbican, who was commissioned for the project and led the team of photography and sculpture students.
“But it was interesting being given that criteria and having to work around it,” Mason photography student Adam Breakiron said.
Using burned wood also added another connection to Sage, who died in 1963. She was inspired by the surrealist movement’s fascination with dreams and its expression of the subconscious in art.
“[Sage] was superstitious; she’d had a reoccurring dream with scaffolding on fire,” said Kelly Hendrickson, a sculpture student in Mason’s School of Art. Hendrickson uncovered the information about Sage’s persistent dream while doing the research required of all students before embarking on the build.
“It was necessary for students to understand the reference to art history and Sage's importance to the surrealists before embarking on the build,” Wrbican said.
The fire connection spurred Hendrickson and others to want the finished project to be struck by lightning and consumed by flames.
“It would be beautiful; so poetic,” Hendrickson said.
“Nature provided it, and nature would take it away,” Wrbican said.
Sugar Loaf locals told Wrbican that the shale outcropping where the structure sits seems to attract lightning strikes. The foundation of the artwork is designed to remain behind once the original structure is gone, so it can be a base for 3-D art constructed by other artists in the future. One of the biggest challenges for the Mason students was figuring out how to anchor the structure into the rocky earth, Hendrickson, said.
“Everything under the dirt is just rock. It was over 20 feet [tall] and weighed more than 500 pounds, and it had to not fall over,” she said.
Brian Gitt, a veteran carpenter and builder living in nearby Warwick, N.Y., was introduced to Wrbican by a mutual friend and decided to help the students with the project. Gitt helped the team design a foundation that anchored in the ground to support the heavy structure.
Breakiron said inventiveness was key to the process.
“I’m from a family of five boys—I can build almost a whole house from the ground up, but I’m used to being told what to do. This time I had to figure that stuff out,” he said.
The group camped onsite for a few nights over the course of several weeks until their project was completed.
“It was good to be right on the worksite; after breakfast you are right there. No commute to work,” Breakiron said. “It would have been easy to detach from the project if you weren’t there.”
“It’s good to start these projects now as students at Mason,” Hendrickson said. Projects like the one in Sugar Loaf are resume builders that will make it easier to land work on other projects, she said.
Other students also worked on the project directly, conducted research or took photos for the construction crew. They are Naomi Berhane, Farrah Abubaker, Camillia Elci and Samantha Fedorova.
Research was conducted in Provisions Library with Don Russell, a Mason University Libraries curator. Mason faculty member Elsabe Dixon and Mason alumna Chelsea Dobert-Kehn also worked on the project.