For the past month my good friend Jamie Viada has lead a crack crew of fellow West Oakland artists, including Almost Scientific pals Ben Carpenter and Ryon Gesink, on the fist of his Art Across America projects.
Art Across America
is a nationwide art initiative that educates and creates awareness around environmental issues by bringing communities together to build sculptures out of reclaimed materials along our Highways.
Each sculpture will have energy producing alternatives that will be incorporated into their design.
The idea is that a crew of artists rolls into a town along a highway and build a “green,” kinetic sculpture that generates energy. Each sculpture will be built with local, recycled and reclaimed materials and the sculpture will be designed in collaboration with locals.
Their first endeavor was in Hawaii and the crew is just now trickling back to the Bay Area with fantastic stories and pictures. I believe the next installation will be in West Oakland and then head highway 80 to NY!
Building and designing large scale kinetic sculptures out of recycled and reclaimed materials is a tricky job because you are never sure what you are going to get or find, which makes design is a constant work-in-progress.
Good work Jamie and Crew!
Check out this first video of the Hawaii piece:
