nature; most of his colleagues come from art
or architectural backgrounds and chose it as
the most direct medium in which to realize
visions. It became clear to LaVerdiere, after
apprenticing in several scenic shops, that he
wanted to control the design.
Now, beginning with delicately detailed
drawings that have a life of their own, La-
Verdiere creates entire sets or key figures in
an imagined world, often in fractional scale
to the finished image. A rocket device the
size of a car appears on film to dwarf a house
©; avast sandwich factory springs from
props and mirrors in a four-foot cube®.
In this last set, even after the line between
reality and reflection was disclosed, the illu-
sion persisted with a stubborn veracity.
Though LaVerdiere possesses the hand/
eye skills to make many of the fantastical
objects himself that he’s able to conceive and
draw, he now contracts scenic shops to fab-
ricate his designs and can direct them to
achieve the exacting detail required. In these
sets he combines found objects, kitchen
accessories and industrial and construction
supplies in a seamless concoction that may
not exist in the real world but still seems
recognizable. For one client, a cosmetics
company, he created from existing hard-
ware, electronics and custom-machined
parts the facade of a hidden safe that looks
so real you wonder what it contains ©.
LaVerdiere’s perhaps best-known work
is
Tribute In Light,
what has become an an-
nual memorial to those who perished in the
9/11 attacks. Designed with Paul Myoda as
an image for the cover of the
New 'York Times
Magazine,
Sept. 23,2001, in response to a
request for artists’ reactions to the attacks,
the image of the twin beams of light ghosting
the downed Twin Towers also appeared on
the cover of
Art in America
that November.
Realized in March 2002 as an installation
consisting of 88 searchlights placed next
to the World Trade Center site,
Tribute^
dec/jan 10 american craft 031
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