Adam Kuby
- 2014-2015
- Landscape Architecture
- Garden Club of America Rome Prize
Adam Kuby, Sea Level Clocks, 2014
Ink, pencil, photo & digital collage on paper.
Proposal for identical structures placed in New York Harbor and San Francisco Bay that measure and track sea level rise over the next century–while also Illuminating daily tidal fluctuations. Made of “oystercrete”, a mixture of oyster shells and concrete, clocks also provides a substrate and armature for the growth of new oysters a new oyster reef. On the top, 196 tidal pools add additional marine habitat, one for each country in the world–at least as of now.
Adam Kuby, Cliff Dwelling, 1993
Lithograph and watercolor on paper, 61 x 101.6 cm.
Proposal for a sculpture that provides nesting habitat for peregrine falcons in a skyscraper. The building's glass skin would be pulled in to make room for the overhanging ledges of artificial rock. Inside, space is provided for public viewing. Unlike a zoo, the birds are not fed or caged. Here the people are confined. The falcons are free.
Adam Kuby, Incrementally, 2010
Granite, trees, 45.7 cm x 7.6 x 1.5 m. Seattle, WA.
Adam Kuby, Incrementally, 2010
Detail
Interactions between trees, stone and other natural forces will shift, heave, move or crack the blocks over time, continuing the form-making process that has been initiated.
Adam Kuby, Tree Tectonics, 2014
Granite, 25.4 x 157.5 x 106.7 cm. Portland, OR.
Two stones set between 2 growing trees are engraved with a map showing the geologic faults running through the Portland Metro area. As the trees grow they will shift the stones, mimicking the slow steady tectonic forces at work underfoot.
Adam Kuby, Eventually, 2008
Granite, soil, vegetation, 0.6 x 3 x 19.8 m. Vancouver, BC.
Granite blocks were sculpted to simulate the geologic erosion that would normally take eons. A spectrum of vegetation from rock-colonizing perennials to large native trees was planted in the sculpture’s widening gap, Vegetation will shift and heave the stone as they grow.
Adam Kuby, We Who Imagine, 2014
Granite, vegetation. Beaverton, OR.
An original poem is engraved onto a 100' line of granite. Trees planted on either side of the line will shift, heave and break the line as they mature, creating an evolving interaction between the trees, stone and poem.
Adam Kuby, Breaker, 2013
Salvaged building stone, earth, vegetation, 3 x 19.8 x 15.2 m. Aberdeen, WA.
When Aberdeen's historic 1909 high school burned down in 2002 the city salvaged many of the sandstone blocks from the ruins, but without knowing how they might be reused. Inspired by the stones and craftsmen who carved them, the blocks now take the form of a cresting ocean wave sited along this coastal town's main thoroughfare.
Adam Kuby, Ikea Chair, 2015
Wood, metal, 89 cm x 4.5 x 6 m. Installation, American Academy in Rome.
The sculpture maps out the disintegration of an everyday object. Each row is comprised of one chair, broken down into smaller and smaller pieces. The work evinces the ongoing disintegration of things in our material world.
BIO
Based in Portland, Oregon, Adam Kuby has been creating landscape-based, ecologically responsive public art commissions and installations for the cities of Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, BC, Calgary, Phoenix and others. Kuby's past experience in landscape architecture, urban forestry and zoo habitat design informs his art practice, having worked in the offices of Laurie Olin, Quennel Rothschild, and the Central Park Conservancy. He studied design of the environment as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, and received a MFA in sculpture from the University of North Carolina. Kuby has been a resident at Yaddo Artist Residency, received 2 awards from the Public Art Network and a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission.