Artwork Detail

This ninety-foot-long artwork in the lobby of the renovated Mark Ridley Thomas Behavioral Health Center highlights the multi-decade links between the institution and the local residential community of Willowbrook, south of central Los Angeles. The artists were inspired by Silver Threads, a quilting circle with a long-standing history in the local community whose hand-made quilts are donated to patients in need at the health center. The artwork uses a traditional `broken dish' quilt block pattern to stitch together digital photographs of three sets of homes from the local community. Suggesting that digital imagery is the fabric of contemporary culture, the resulting composite streetscapes offer a tentative set of residential typologies in the Willowbrook community while also revealing the differences and idiosyncrasies of the neighborhood's architecture. The streetscapes are comprised of layered images, alternately colored translucent or opaque, and distributed onto two surfaces of a deep lightbox. The artwork utilizes the repetitive geometry of the quilt pattern to produce a parallax effect causing the image to visually vibrate as the viewer moves. The repeated swatches on the front and back surfaces collapse into a single 2D pattern when viewed in elevation but emerge as a glitch-like repetition from an angle. The lightbox is constructed with an aluminum frame and skin with recessed LED lighting to create a luminous interior balanced with the lobby's light. The back-layer print is on Dibond, and the front-layer direct print is on large shiplapped polycarbonate panels.

FreelandBuck is a Los Angeles and New York City-based architectural office founded and led by Brennan Buck and David Freeland. Established in 2010, the office makes buildings, spaces, and objects that engage the public through layers of meaning, illusion, and visual effect. FreelandBuck aims to create distinct spaces that contribute to a more stimulating, aesthetically engaging, and challenging world with each project. The firm's architecture and public artworks are notable for their visual richness, intricate spatial sequences, cultural reference, and use of drawing, as both design method and autonomous form of work, FreelandBuck is a winner of the Architectural League of New York's Emerging Voices Prize in 2019. They were named a finalist for the 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, a member of Architectural Record's 2017 Design Vanguard, and a winner of the 2017 AIA LA Next LA Award for their project, Second House. To learn more visit: https://www.freelandbuck.com/