Page 135 - David Bermant Foundation

DAVID BERMANT FOUNDATIONKristin JonesLuminessence Rome, ItalyUpon graduating from Yale University School of Art in 1983, Kristin Jones won a Fullbright Fellowship to Rome, Italy, to explore the many ways that fountains animate and focus public space. She was struck by the potential and abandon of the Tiber River, and she imagined awakening it with evocative contemporary art that could manifest its fluid dynamic energy.Years later, in 2001, Jones returned to Rome with a Senior Fullbright Fellowship and a vision for a flexible matrix of thousands of points of light, responsive to the Tiber’s current. The organic, submerged waveform would mirror the sinuous path of the river as it meandered through the city, appearing to swim upstream like a school of fish or a serpentine constellation, evoking the Roman legend of Asclepius, the ancient Greek god ofhealing. The luminous structure, which Jones titled “Luminessence,” would reveal the energy of the Tiber, illuminating and articulating its flow.The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion, long-time supporters of Jones’ work, provided a three-year challenge grant to help the artist make her vision a reality. With the foundation’s support, an initial theoretical and mathematical study conducted by the Courant Institute at New York University brought together a team of Roman colleagues from the Fluid Dynamics Department of the Engineering School of the University of Rome. In 2007 Jones collaborated with architect Daniel K. Brown to produce “Luminalia,” a serpentine line of one thousand candles which illuminated a half-kilometer of the river basin. TEVERETERNO is an ongoing project working to develop a global competition for the responsible and dynamic renewal of the Tiber River, developing realizable landscape and infrastructure measures to facilitate public access and conservation of the urban waterfront.134FOUNDATION GRANTS