Art and science intertwined

Erik Carlson drove a truck filled with colored tubes and other sculpture components from Cranston, Rhode Island, to Pullman at the end of spring 2024. Over three days, he helped install a major new piece of public art on the Washington State University campus. Entwine now cascades down three floors in the Plant Sciences Building opposite the football field.

With funding from ArtsWa and as part of the Art in Public Places program, WSU’s campus art committee selected Area C Projects, consisting of Carlson and Erica Carpenter, to formulate their challenge: create a work of art that acts like a plant, or approaches the surrounding structure of the Plant Sciences Building as a type of growing medium.

“We were inspired by the art committee’s comments and the nature of the research being done in the Plant Sciences Building to push ourselves and develop a decentralized artwork that literally entwined itself with the building. We also wanted to create an artwork that offered multiple scales and points of engagement, reflecting our multifaceted relationship with the plant kingdom,” Carlson says.

The artists created a work that mirrors the growth of plants. Rootlike forms of colored tubes emerge from the exposed pipes, ducts, and electrical conduits of the Plant Sciences Building.

The colored tubes feature custom-made glass caps. Some of these caps include lights. Others reveal internal fluorescent colors. The glass, at times, magnifies. It also catches the light in compelling ways.

The pipes, in places, cluster in bunches, where boxes with bubbled glass windows invite visitors to further explore the structure.

According to Area C’s proposal, “The artwork mimics the relationship between epiphytes, plants that grow harmlessly on the surfaces of other plants, and phorophytes, the sturdier plants that provide epiphytes the base from which to grow…the artwork and the building commingle to the point that it can be unclear just which portions of these climbing, probing tubes are part of the building, and which are part of the artwork.”

The color palette is inspired by Nez Perce (Nimíipuu) woven bags whose natural dyes reflect the landscape of the region. The artists color-matched these plant-based dyes to modern paints used on the tubes.

These colorful tubular bundles build off the building’s water, air, and electrical systems to create something new, strange, plantlike, and wild in the public areas of the Plant Sciences Building.

The next time you’re watching football in Pullman or taking a photo in front of the Cougar Pride statue, consider crossing the street to also see Entwine.

The colored tubes feature custom-made glass caps and lights. (Photo courtesy Area C Projects)