Littoral Drift, 2012
Commissioned by the County of San Diego

​Located in the County of San Diego's Planning and Permit Building, Littoral Drift functions as a series of seven biomorphic chandeliers. Their delicately woven upper expanses contrast with darkly attenuated stems, where densely wrapped nodes suggestive of a generative principle protrude and trail off into space. Together, canopy and stem are expressions of light and dark, earth and air, contraction and release, and suggest any number of biological forms, whether aquatic or terrestrial.
 
The polished stainless steel surfaces are highly reflective. The denser and darker wire of their lower portions act as visual counterweights to the more ephemeral canopy above, activating the space they occupy with an intricate interplay of light and shadow.


Photos: Jerry Manning