Shane Allbritton and Norman Lee, artists and Co-Founders of RE:site, use public space to consider community, identity, and narrative. They draw on a site’s cultural landscape to generate strong narratives that resonate with a community’s local meanings. Dynamic, multi-layered works meld art, architecture, and landscape, resulting in transformative public installations. Their commemorative work is emotion-laden; From Absence to Presence, Commemorating Contributions of Enslaved Peoples at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, replicates a slave quarter, evoking the locale’s archaeological history. Poetry becomes dramatically illuminated, an eternal vigil to the memory and resilience of the enslaved people who lived on the college grounds.
New York-based Michael Beneville specializes in realizing visions. As the creative director of multiple projects large and small, he wears many hats. He brings audacious ideas to life - from corporate headquarters, immersive retail pavilions and arts festivals, to privately commissioned books, films, and fine art. Beneville’s largest project to date is the Las Vegas Area 15 immersive and experiential retail bazaar, which re-imagines the shopping center concept.This is an unprecedented 200,000-square-foot entertainment complex featuring live performances, curated retail, virtual reality, interactive art and exclusive dining in a fusion of creativity and counter-culture. Meow Wolf is the anchor tenant of this groundbreaking development.
SHANE ALLBRITTON + NORMAN LEE
MICHAEL BENEVILLE
JASON BRUGES
JAMES CARPENTER
GEORGE FIFIELD
PETER FINK
LAURIE FRICK
A European leader in artwork that sits between the world of architecture, site-specific installation art and interactive design, London-based Jason Bruges trained as an architect. He is passionate about creating pieces that engage people with their environments by harnessing the energy and activity of the immediate locale, including pedestrian movement, changing light conditions, shadows, birds in flight and the growth of plants. All work is created with the most human purpose in mind, such as a wall of digital animals that distract children on their way to surgery. Bruges’ high-tech media palette includes multi-layered projection, LEDs, digital mirrors incorporating applied technology, system design and data visualization.
The pre-eminent pioneer in the field bridging the gap between architecture and art, New York-based architect James Carpenter is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design where he studied architecture and sculpture, and began creating light-based artworks. At Corning Glass Works, Carpenter learned to incorporate glass into building designs, integrating conceptual art and urban architecture. As Director of James Carpenter Design Associates (JCDA), a design firm at the intersection of art, engineering and the built environment, he has worked for more than 30 years as both artist and architect. JCDA has been the recipient of numerous awards, including most recently, a CODAaward for the Harvard Business School’s Schwartz Pavilion.
Artist, writer, teacher and media arts champion George Fifield is a trailblazer in the curation and exhibition of digital media on a large scale. As Founder and Executive Director of Boston Cyberarts, he and his team encourage experimentation in digital media through events and educational programs, fostering new practices in contemporary art. The organization curates projects, created by artists and tech professionals, which appear on the Massachusetts Convention Center multi-screen 80-foot-tall LED marquee. Boston Cyberarts has commissioned more than 300 original media works, providing best practices for other cities to showcase media talent using video, projections, LED technologies and other mediums.
Motivated by the belief that art can become a core ingredient in urban design as well as a primary catalyst for change, London-based Peter Fink highlights the role of artistic creativity in cityscapes. His work fuses art with architecture, urbanism, engineering, ecology and environmental design. Fink’s signature style uses color to evoke emotion. The 2017 Colorful City project (Moscow) involved twelve structures evocative of architectural volumes, gateways, streets and public spaces. The installation transformed the soulless space into a world of color and stimulation. Fink has taught architecture, co-written several books on public art, and consulted on the design and management of public spaces.
Laurie Frick is a data artist extraordinaire. At the forefront of using personal data to create art installations, she considers how we will consume the mass of data increasingly captured about us. Evidence of her engineering background and long history in high-tech are seen in the deep data analyses and detailed explanations of how this future will unfold. Frick recently collaborated with Judson (glass) Studios to realize a data visualization project at the Texas A&M Engineering School. Fused glass tiles cover 334.5 square feet, with each color representing student project data. Her work regarding the future of data has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, as well as in The Atlantic and Wired Magazines.
MARJORIE GUYON
+ PATRICK J. MITCHELL
+ PATRICK J. MITCHELL
BJ Krivanek
+ Joel Breaux
+ Joel Breaux
SHANNON RILEY
+ MEREDITH WINNER
+ MEREDITH WINNER
ELLIOT SCHWARTZ
+ IVAN SCHWARTZ
+ IVAN SCHWARTZ
Ali Lahijanian
+ Selinda Martinez
+ Selinda Martinez
Co-creators of the acclaimed I Was Here project (a 2020 CODAawards winner), Marjorie Guyon and Patrick J. Mitchell have teamed up to bring light to the history of American slavery while focusing on the humanity of those enslaved. I Was Here consists of 21 Ancestor Spirit Portraits using photographs by Mitchell. Guyon works in marble dust and pigment collage to create an archeological “soul.” I Was Here synthesizes their work through photographs, collage and poetry and appears in spaces where enslaved persons lived, and were bought and sold. Powerful translucent tapestries, viewable from both sides and illuminated from behind, suggest ghostly images that exist between the contemporary and the ancient.
BJ Krivanek and Joel Breaux are masters of visual iconography, using words, symbols and inscriptions to create narratives for their art installations. Their astonishing projects straddle the worlds of performance, urban design and public art. Krivanek and Breaux produce inscribed buildings, spaces, and infrastructures that broadcast community experiences and interface with natural and built environments. They specialize in experiential choreography that moves viewers through a network of pathways in response to visual cues. The artists’ collaborative approach begins with the stakeholders - to collect the underlying cultural histories, contexts, and dynamics related to a site. Their work is stripped of cosmetics but imbued with substance.
Representing a new breed of art consultants, Shannon Riley and Meredith Winner produce and curate unique art installations from conception to completion. Co-Founders of Building 180, a San Francisco-based full-service firm, they inspire creativity by collaborating with innovative artists, architects, brands, city planners, designers, developers, museum curators and others to build communities through art. Through their passion for art and with their deep project management experience, Riley and Winner specialize in building experiences, community and change. In 2020, Building 180 partnered with nonprofit Art for Civil Discourse to raise money for artists in response to COVID-19.
History is at the heart of the works made by Elliot and Ivan Schwartz, but as materials and technology have changed, so has their palette. They describe their work as figurative storytelling. Through StudioEIS, the brothers have continually revised and expanded their view of the Country’s past, often celebrating the memory of our heroes, some who have been long forgotten and neglected. Twenty-first century digital technology allows them to be infinitely more creative, tackling traditional bronze figures, life-like museum installations, fantasy creatures for corporate promotions, and much more. The Schwartz underlying premise is that sculpture can be used in the development of our national symbols, helping us to communicate with and understand one another.
With the biggest of hearts, Ali Lahijanian and Selinda Martinez, Co-Founders of Rbhu Engineering, are more than generous in giving back to their community. The Rbhu Gives Back program during the COVID-19 crisis pledged $30,000 in engineering services to bring communities together. The firm offers structural and dynamic analysis, 3D modeling and rendering, and structural drawings - all for the purpose of demonstrating that monumental sculpture can lift the human spirit, ignite our imagination, help us process and express feelings, and bring people together. The team serves as Burning Man’s partner engineering firm and design consultant, helping to make magic in the desert.
NATALIE MACNAMARA
MITCHELL JOACHIM
Working on the cutting edge of conceptual art based in new media, Natalie MacNamara, the Principal of NAMARA, lives by the mantra “Art can be anywhere.” Toronto-based NAMARA brings sophisticated conceptual artwork installations to global luxury brands, collaborating with well-known artists and architects to create mind-bending installations. NAMARA worked with Polymetis to develop Monument To Arctic Phenomena (M.A.P.) for the BRANTA outdoor clothing line.The work imparts the awe-inspiring display of the aurora borealis and the intangibility of arctic sea smoke, arising from the ice floe. NAMARA’s success is achieved by utilizing different models of art production and presentation, while meeting the constraints community environments.
The leading ambassador for using pioneering design to combat species extinction, Mitchell Joachim is Co-Founder of Terreform ONE [Open Network Ecology], an architecture and urban design research group. Joachim and his team focus on the intersections of ecological planning, biotech architecture and public art. Early on, they realized that they could influence habitat loss through choices in urban design. Projects include innovations such as building facades that double as wildlife habitats (e.g., a vertical meadow for butterflies). An Associate Professor at NYU, Joachim was formerly an architect with Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei. He is a Fulbright Scholar and has had fellowships with TED, Moshe Safdie, and Martin Society for Sustainability.
25 Creative Revolutionaries lead the way for positive change.
What a year, 2020. As we look forward to 2021, where we hope to rise from the ashes, it seems more important than ever to recognize the creative professionals who will lead the way in affecting change.
Our amazing tribe of creative professionals is flush with individuals who have devoted their careers to making the world a more beautiful place. But their amazing projects have become, in this past year, stronger, deeper, more meaningful. Artists and their collaborators are tackling difficult issues of a social, political, or environmental nature. Their work is fueled by the desire to solve real-world problems, or to raise provocative questions, or to make us pay attention to the world around us.
Their mission is to inspire positive change. Our design + art community is filled with professionals who are taking a stand through the spaces they transform. We call these activist individuals Creative Revolutionaries.
For the second year, CODAworx has gathered together a list of 25 leaders of this artistic revolution to shine a spotlight on their efforts – which reflect so well on this entire industry of commissioned art professionals. The list of Creative Revolutionaries includes the artist magicians whose diverse works serve as mirrors of our world. It also includes the pioneers who are leading the way in using new technological tools or materials that allow for the creation of artwork that facilitates empathy and engagement. They implore us to do better.
It is our distinct honor to bring together the leading rabble-rousers — those who provide us with the vision, connections, strategy, and effective practices to bring about change. They give us all a renewed sense of purpose.
Toni Sikes
CEO — CODAworx
Our amazing tribe of creative professionals is flush with individuals who have devoted their careers to making the world a more beautiful place. But their amazing projects have become, in this past year, stronger, deeper, more meaningful. Artists and their collaborators are tackling difficult issues of a social, political, or environmental nature. Their work is fueled by the desire to solve real-world problems, or to raise provocative questions, or to make us pay attention to the world around us.
Their mission is to inspire positive change. Our design + art community is filled with professionals who are taking a stand through the spaces they transform. We call these activist individuals Creative Revolutionaries.
For the second year, CODAworx has gathered together a list of 25 leaders of this artistic revolution to shine a spotlight on their efforts – which reflect so well on this entire industry of commissioned art professionals. The list of Creative Revolutionaries includes the artist magicians whose diverse works serve as mirrors of our world. It also includes the pioneers who are leading the way in using new technological tools or materials that allow for the creation of artwork that facilitates empathy and engagement. They implore us to do better.
It is our distinct honor to bring together the leading rabble-rousers — those who provide us with the vision, connections, strategy, and effective practices to bring about change. They give us all a renewed sense of purpose.
Toni Sikes
CEO — CODAworx
cre·a·tive
/krēˈādiv/
/krēˈādiv/
— relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.
— (of a person) having good imagination or original ideas.
— (of a person) having good imagination or original ideas.
rev·o·lu·tion·ar·y
/ˌrevəˈlo͞oSHəˌnerē/
/ˌrevəˈlo͞oSHəˌnerē/
— involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.
Matthew Mazzotta is an artist and activist, harnessing the power of the built environment to shape our relationships and experiences. His community-specific public projects integrate new forms of social engagement into the built environment. Projects create temporary public spaces for listening – an ‘Outdoor Living Room’ – to capture voices from local people, revealing how the spaces we inhabit and spend our time have the potential to become distinct sites for intimate, radical, and meaningful exchanges. His projects have been featured on CNN, BBC, NPR, The Huffington Post, Discovery Channel, and Science Magazine. He is a TED Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University.
MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Elizabeth Turk produces astonishing projects in participatory immersive art experiences. She truly makes participation an art form in itself. Her projects enlist community members to create new ways of sharing imagination and developing collective memories.The goal is to offer an artistic platform upon which one discovers new forms of civic participation, joy and grace. A recent example is Project: Look Up, achieved with the help of 400 retirement center staff and residents, which had participants carry colorful floral design umbrellas while snaking through the community garden to Tchaikovsky’s “March of the Tin Soldiers.” The native Californian is also known for her intricate marble sculptures.
In her role as Co-Founder of Fusion CI Studios, Lauren Millar personifies the true meaning of creative collaborator. She makes imagery come to life by creating a magical art gallery where static images morph and shape-shift, transitioning from one image to the next. Fusion CI Studios specializes in collaboration with other artists.The company’s extraordinary techniques include simulation of ocean surfaces, delicate splashes, smoke, fire, explosions and more with uncompromising, photo-realistic, feature-film quality. Millar’s creative work is informed by a long career in film and television; she has won multiple awards while producing more than 100 television programs. She combines art and science to create visual miracles.
A champion par excellence of sustainability, Colin Selig uses castoff propane tanks as his medium of choice. Repurposed propane tanks become almost everything imaginable in his work, from functional seating (benches, tables, sofas) to biomorphic sculpture (dogs, bees, squirrels, scorpions). With installations in private homes, museums and other public spaces, Selig’s whimsical work is human scaled and intended to be enjoyed tactilely as well as visually. Tanks are carefully dissected and reassembled, with no additional reshaping, a process that produces objects which contain 99% post-consumer reused content. His use of color and innovative design sensibility have brought him commissions from around the world.
Bill Washabaugh is a global leader in re-imagining how to combine technology and scientific research to better meet the needs of the natural environment and the public. His varied background (aerospace engineer, roboticist, designer, builder, and musician) is evident in his work; in 2008, Washabaugh founded Hypersonic, a Brooklyn-based collaborative studio, to create new media sculptures and physical installations. Innovative sculptural forms that replicate natural movements - often inspired by the patterns in nature - are made from interactive electro-mechanical systems; these artworks draw inspiration from the natural world and replicate natural movements as well as exploring the dynamics of group behavior.
MATTHEW MAZZOTTA
ELIZABETH TURK
LAUREN MILLAR
COLIN SELIG
BILL WASHABAUGH
Artist Joe O’Connell creates provocative art that provides insightful commentary to current conversations around social justice, community policing and environmentalism. He is the Founder and President of Creative Machines, a design and fabrication firm building interactive exhibits, kinetic rolling ball machines and site-specific sculptures. Their installations can be found in public art collections throughout the United States and abroad. Since inception, Creative Machines’ artwork has sparked curiosity, encouraged social interaction, and inspired self-confidence. O’Connell states, “My goal is to create an atmosphere of participation, curiosity, and connection to community.”
A magician of the art and culture of the city, Robin Nigh serves as the Manager of Arts & Cultural Affairs for the City of Tampa. She was an early pioneer in the field of contemporary public art, developing nationally recognized programs that were also firsts in the field, including the Photographer Laureate Program and Lights On Tampa. Lights on Tampa began in 2006 and has since brought 21 permanent and 60 temporary installations to the downtown area – and has become a signature brand for the city in the process. Nigh is trained as an art historian, having taught art history at Florida State University, Florida International University, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
CHRISTIANE PAUL
An early champion of the digital arts as a significant art form, Christiane Paul is renowned internationally as a curator and expert on the intersection of art and technology. An award-winning writer, exhibition curator and educator, she serves as Director/Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School, and as Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At the Whitney, she has curated pioneering exhibitions on art and technology, and is responsible for artport, the Museum’s website devoted to Internet art. Paul is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation’s 2016 Writing Award in Digital Arts.
ANNE PATTERSON
Anne Patterson creates beautifully immersive environments that use one material in great multiplicity – 7 miles of aluminum wire strands, 100’s of lengths of piano wire or 34 miles of satin ribbon. Based in Brooklyn, Patterson creates large-scale multimedia installations that combine sculpture, architecture, lighting, video, music and scent. Trained as an architect and theater production designer, she creates awe-inspiring metaphorical works that encapsulate the transformational power of group dynamics. Patterson encourages viewers to consider how one shape, material, or form used repeatedly can create something larger than the sum of its parts – something great and overwhelming in its scale and beauty.
JOE O’CONNELL
ROBIN NIGH
JENNY SABIN
ROBB POPE
Artist and architectural designer Jenny Sabin is at the forefront of 21st century architectural practice; she investigates the intersections of architecture and science, applying insights from biology and mathematics to the design of material structures. Sabin is Principal of Jenny Sabin Studio, an experimental architecture studio based in Ithaca, NY, with clients such as Nike, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, the Exploratorium, and Frac Centre. She collaborates with companies such as Microsoft Research to study human interaction with emerging, empathetic AI. Sabin is a Professor in Architecture at Cornell University where she established a new advanced degree in matter design computation.
Robb Pope is not only the master of light art, but he generously shares his extensive knowledge with others in his community. His company, Digital Ambiance, broadcasts the Luminous Podcast, a series featuring artists, designers, and engineers active in new media arts.The podcast offers conversations with today’s most accomplished and respected voices in immersive installations and the visual arts scene. Digital Ambiance is a full service design firm specializing in light art, creating immersive multimedia environments, interactive installations, and experiential marketing solutions.They push the boundaries of addressable LED, projection mapping, and sensor technologies for major brands and leading artists.
