Finalist #1 – Untitled by DeWitt Godfrey

Description by DeWitt Godfrey

When naming my work, I try to find a direct connection to the place, history, and context of the location.

My work is grounded in responding to the environment, the physical site, nature’s abstract geometry, and community. The question of how my sculptures respond to larger social, historical, and cultural contexts animates all of my work.

Natural geometries and systems — plant spores, seashells, honeycombs — inspire my sculptures. Through my process of packing and stacking conic and cylindrical steel forms, simple units give rise to extraordinary complexity. The individual parts of each sculpture form a community of similar yet distinct, interdependent elements that together create an aesthetic, structural, and material ecosystem. My working methods employ carefully conceived structural processes that combine cutting-edge digital technologies with hands-on craftsmanship, all grounded in empirical knowledge and experimentation.

For the San Pablo Roundabout, my proposed work takes its structural and aesthetic cues from the Desert Bluebell and other species of desert trumpet flowers. Rather than simply mimic floral forms, the packed conic elements that compose the sculpture share the same underlying natural geometry known as Voronoi structures. These shapes and patterns are found throughout nature — from the cellular structure of plants to snakeskin to soap bubbles. While my work is abstract, its formal language evokes ideas and patterns that are deeply familiar.

The interdisciplinary nature of my work — rooted in the geometry and mathematics of the natural world, the transformative possibilities of computational design, rigorous research, and the history and context of each site — creates an experience unlike that of other artists or artworks.

Possible names include: Campana, Campanada, Bel, Belle, Flo, Flos.

Rendering of Untitled by DeWitt Godfrey at day.

Rendering of Untitled by DeWitt Godfrey at night.