More than 50 University of Kansas students, faculty and staff collaborated – over four semesters – to create a public sculpture project. The commissioned art, completed in mid-November, marked the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve System.
According to associate professor of art Matthew Burke, the team sifted through a collection of employee memorabilia, such as pens, stamps, and nameplates.
"The idea all along was to take inspiration from the objects that the employees had donated and to amplify them, to rearrange their design, to pull from various aspects of their aesthetic properties and reconfigure them into the shape of a beehive," Burke says.
Ceramic, wood, metal, and assemblage sculptures placed on pedestals are clustered in a mass like a honeycomb.
Twenty pieces are now on view to the public in the mezzanine of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. More works are expected to go on display at the bank’s branches in Denver, Oklahoma, and Omaha.
Burke says the project provided an opportunity for students to gain professional experience.
"It showed another way that artists can get work out into the world," he says. "It doesn't necessarily have to go to a gallery or a museum. There are many, many ways that art can go out and touch people's lives."
