30: Kofmehl Studio
Michael Morrill William Kofmehl
Buildings, and the spaces they contain, inspire and hold histories and memories. Michael’s Tide Plane and a replica of a 30-foot New England whaling boat, which was the principal form of William’s MFA Thesis installation and performance, were produced in the same space during our graduate school years in the School of Art at Yale University. Our common studio in Hammond Hall, the former Hammond Metallurgical Laboratory built in 1904, and one of the few examples of Beaux-Arts architecture at Yale University, was razed in 2009. Occupying the same space 30 years apart, our Hammond Hall studio inspired work that was conceptually, formally and spatially distinct, yet mysteriously similar thematically. The link of working in a shared space connected in memory, bound our commitment to collaborate with a joint site-specific sculpture installation in William’s monumental Pittsburgh studio and project space, the former Torath Chaim Synagogue that also served to inspire people over its many different roles: first as a family home, then as a place of worship, and now as a creative space for making and showing art.
Planning for our joint installation began in conversation; sharing stories and memories of long days and late nights in Hammond Hall, intense critiques with peers and visiting artists, friendships formed and the remarkable resources available to us. We talked about how we each utilized our shared studio, Michael working to empty the studio to isolate a finished piece, Bill filling it with a profusion of works in progress and his mega collection of tools and materials. We spoke of our influences, backgrounds, and experiences during the many years before, and after, we knew one another, in which we formed our sculptural and visual sensibilities. Strangely, beyond the unusual synchronicity of attending the same MFA Sculpture program, and working in the same studio, albeit thirty years apart, we subliminally created nautically thematic works. Perhaps it is Yale’s location next to Long Island Sound, where freshwater mixes with saltwater, or a deep primordial need for humans to reflect on the origins of our being, it was the commonality of water that guided our selection of Michael’s Tide Plane and William’s vessel to bring together in a site-specific installation that was to become 30. The larger challenge was how to integrate all of this specifically to William’s grand space.
The departing elders of Torath Chaim Synagogue removed, among other artifacts, the Torah Ark that housed the Torah scrolls, leaving an empty chamber at the end of the former sanctuary. What seems an obvious and significant architectural element to incorporate into the installation initially eluded our thinking until William explained the presence of a blue light, the sacred color of Judaism, that was still dimly operating near the empty chamber when he acquired the building.
The installation came into focus. We installed blue digital lights on both interior sides of the chamber, washing it in ephemeral blue light in respect to what was once there and gone now, and symbolically evoking water and sky. An original timber, removed from the building during an earlier renovation, was installed in the center of the chamber and inlaid with a 24kt gold leaf panel having the same length and height as the central wall element of Tide Plane when it was initially exhibited decades earlier in Hammond Hall. The physical and light modifications transform what was an empty chamber to an abstract pharos, navigating our Hammond Hall produced sculpture along the central axis of the building.
After many voyages, following Bill from New Haven to other sites, his original whaling vessel from his MFA thesis installation found safe harbor resting on the wooden floor of the entrance to 30. The prow of the boat points directly toward the gold beacon standing tall at the far end of the expansive space, piloting Mike’s recreation of Tide Plane floating on the open floor in a sea of red, bonding vestiges of our past sculpture with the changing architecture and history of the site.