In collaboration with UrbanGlass, NYSCI commissioned the glass installation “Finding the Window” by artist Romina Gonzales, for the museum’s double height entry space, to help reopen its doors and welcome back its visitors during Summer 2021.

NYSCI chose to pursue a glass artist for the Rotunda Commission, because of the dynamic nature of the medium, and its potential to create spectacle, engage visitors in curiosity and wonder about the glass-making process, and for its ability to play off of the light-filled space.

As a result of this focus on glass, we sought the expertise of the UrbanGlass staff, as advisors and partners for this commission. With their given track record of supporting glass art fabrication and artists, they helped to inform the commission process: from the selection process to fabrication, and the co-develop of educational offerings.

“Finding the Window” consists of a series of window panes made by stretching large masses of clear glass through a technique that was used for making window glass in the early years of industrial glass manufacturing. The completely unique glass pieces, some with slight hues of pink, blue, purple and orange, hang dramatically in a hexagonal form that visually distorts the environment and interacts with the natural light to create pockets of wonder that invite viewers to look with more intent and perceive differently.

Materials
Hand-made glass, copper, stainless steel, polyurethane, pigments

Atoms and molecules are constantly moving, reacting to their surroundings, responding to us, to our movements across space. Everyday materials are nature, as energy constitutes and flows in all things. In becoming one with this movement, molten masses of glass are manually pulled. They stretch vertically with gravity, as they transition from liquid to solid states. It’s a moment of control and surrender, of balance within and without, of being present— a flow state. They stop moving to become still instants of energy in motion. Who knew that such a fragile solid could be so fluid, so stable? What else around us have we missed? As light passes, we perceive windows through which we can observe reality differently and possibilities expand. Supported by a hexagonal structure and copper’s magnifying energy, we find harmony and balance where opposing forces meet.

Romina Gonzales is a New York based, interdisciplinary artist working towards the expansion of consciousness and creation of cultural capital from a post-colonial lens. Influenced by the experience of being born and raised along the Pacific Ocean in the city of Lima, Peru, she pursues collective healing by finding applications of ancestral practices into the needs of our contemporary existence. Practicing within a variety of mediums ranging from chocolate to glass, sulfur, flour, fire, discarded furniture and light, she creates situations for materials to naturally respond to her arbitrary performative gestures. Works include intimate objects, large architectural installations, interactive happenings and dissonant syntaxes in written and spoken word. By presenting narratives in situations that we are not normally used to encountering, she questions perception, rational thinking and behavior while offering alternative perspectives. Romina graduated from New York University after previously attending Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and currently lives by the Hudson River in Newburgh, NY.

Additional Credits

Structural design by Kyoung Hee Kim, PhD AIA of UNCC + HKDNA