Clearing
32’ x 136’ x 89’
Steel, glass mirror concrete enamel paint
2017
2017 FSP/Jerome Fellows
Artist Statement
Dream the Combine is the creative practice of Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers. We are artists and architects who create site-specific installations exploring metaphor, imaginary environments, and perceptual uncertainties that cast doubt on our understanding of the world.
We adapt systems that deal with space, meter, time, and other aspects that construct our social reality. We are interested in engaging the rhetorical complexity of these systems, opening them up to multitudes of encounter and interpretation.
We build three-dimensionally expanded images, our pieces taking on the sketched outlines of drawing. They are structurally complex, challenging in terms of timeline, material, and size. But our work also has a wistful intimacy, and is often in public places on the margins of polished landscapes. We are fascinated by infrastructure and social constructs; our work operates both at the scale of the city and in terms of networked relationships between people.
The formal arrangement of Clearing at Franconia Sculpture, derives from a latent network of artworks currently arrayed in the park, yet the work holds its own as a cluster of repeating elements.
We aimed to erase views of the existing artwork through a series of voids delimited by black figures: in this case, pairs of mirrors mounted to 28’-tall repurposed Twin-City lampposts. Mowed paths emphasize these corridors through the prairie landscape in a clear departure from the existing Jeffersonian grid of rectilinear paths.
Jennifer Newsom
Born: Norwich, CT, USA, 1979
Resides: Minneapolis, MN, USA
Education
M.Arch, Yale School of Architecture, 2005
BA, Yale University, 2001
Tom Carruthers
Born: Vancouver, Canada, 1978
Resides: Minneapolis, MN, USA
Education
M.Arch, Yale School of Architecture, 2005
BA, Brown University, 2000