O U T S K IR T S
Below:
Sentinel Lanterns,
2007,
an FDNY public art com-
mission, concept sketch-
es and plans, work in-
stalled on FDNY Engine
Co. 277 Ladder 112.
Right:
Concept sketches
for brainwashing
instrument, 2009,
for the 2010 film
The
Adjustment Bureau
with Matt Damon.
in Light
was produced by the public art orga-
nization Creative Time and the Municipal
Art Society, working with city agencies and
backed by Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
Following that public work, LaVerdiere
received a grant from the New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for
Art Program to create twin lanterns com-
memorating the valor of all firemen for a
newly completed firehouse in the Bushwick
section of Brooklyn. Although the first de-
sign centered on the concept of an eternal
flame with actual ignited gas, this idea
proved logistically too difficult. LaVer-
diere’s solution,
Sentinel Lanterns,
2007©,
032 american craft dec/jan io
flanking the entrance, reveals, embedded
in 4-foot-by-i4-inch billets of cast acrylic,
a fireman’s ax and Halligan bar (a forcible
entry tool) in one, and a high-pressure water
cannon in the other. With lamps focused
through the column from above and below,
columns of light reminiscent of the Twin
Towers guard the firehouse while the ob-
jects speak to the spirits of the lost firemen.
Lying seductively on LaVerdiere’s desk
as I concluded my interview was an ultravio-
let-ray machine (an early-20th-century medi-
cal cure-all) that he was in the process of
combining with 1950s vacuum tubes and
more recent electronic parts to become
a brainwashing machine in a forthcoming
Matt Damon film,
The Adjustment Bureau
©.
W e are supplied with enough visual cues
to ground us but left clueless as to what’s
going on inside the device; thus the trap is
set for the suspension of disbelief. With his
uncanny eye, LaVerdiere resides comfort-
ably in this dichotomy, preferring to engage
the almost real, the barely plausible and the
totally imagined in a single frame.
Jeremy Lebensnhn owns a sculptural and archi-
tectural metal fabrication studio in Brooklyn.
+
julianlaverdiere.com
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