juyeonk-Looking Outwards-01

Creator: Paige Smith

Title: Urban Geodes

Year of Creation: 2012~

Link to the project: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/09/crystalline-artworks-by-paige-smith/

Urban Geode by Paige Smith is a set of projects created by filling in the gaps and cracks of the urban structures with paper-folded geodes. These projects not only turn the ugly faults on the buildings in to a piece of artwork, but also bring nature into the urban landscape by introducing the organic form of the geodes’ natural growth. The geodes appear in various colors including bright purple, pink and yellow, and are intended to give these holes more liveliness than the monotonous speckle that is usually used to repair them. The main purpose of the project, according to Smith, is to signify the beauty of the urban landscape and to discover beauty in the mundane. These installations could be found in San Francisco, Madrid, Philadelphia, Dubai, Mali, Istanbul, but most notably in Los Angeles.

I found it interesting that this project used perhaps the most ‘unartistic’ setting to create the artwork. Cracks and rifts along the buildings and sidewalks are something that we hardly recognize as beautiful; if anything, they represent the destruction of the hard work by architects and urban planners. But by filling them in with beautiful crystalline structure, Paige showed the extent to which media outside of the convention could be used to convey that seemingly frivolous and ugly features could be turned into a work of art.