The Edith Farnsworth House is excited to host DAVID WALLACE HASKINS: LANDSCAPE + LIGHT, an ongoing exhibition by our current artist-in-residence that began in November 2021 and continues through Winter 2024.
Image Continuous– a new work from his Skycube series made from pyrolitic coated skyscraper glass, (1 ton or 75 linear feet, half the glass used to glaze Edith’s house) that allows visitors to experience themselves moving through the landscape as it enwraps the sky.
Stone Landing– a new installation comprised of a large meditative monolith from Haskins’ new Stone Kōan sculpture series, made from the original travertine that covered the lower terrace of the house from 1951-2021. (see note below). The sculpture is situated in a newly cleared opening in the woods and frames the most scenic views on the property of the fox river. Haskins has also built a new bench for this location and activated it with two hand-tuned 8-foot bass wind chimes that hang in the trees to the east and west of the bench creating a stereo field of swirling harmonies.
Note: In 2021, the travertine stone which Mies personally selected for the house’s lower terrace, had to be removed and replaced due to severe ice damage. This enabled Haskins to use this original stone, which was part of the house for over 70 years, to create a new sculpture series—a number of which will be on view and for sale in the visitor center to help support future renovations of the house.
For more details please enjoy the exhibition overview below:
Image Continuous
Image Continuous in different seasons
Press:
Here, now, and everything in between – Chicago Reader
For media or photo requests, contact Arianna Kiriakos at AKiriakos@savingplaces.org
Memory of Glass: Haskins created The Memory of Glass as an immersive architectural intervention in the house using sound. Rather than working with traditional speakers, Haskins engineered a way for sound to emanate from the house itself, turning its 12 large glass panes into 12 distinct channels of sound.
The result is an immersive sound-field that can be heard inside and outside the home comprised of the actual soundscape that has filled and surrounded the house for the past 70 years—further blurring the line between indoors and outdoors, and merging the past with the present.
Haskins collected these sounds through archives as well as his own field recordings across the property over the last few years. These include birdsong, crickets, rainstorms, owls, bald eagles, egrets, coyotes, traffic, people enjoying an evening party, a woman (presumably Edith) practicing her violin and reading a poem, Mies conversing about his work, Lord Palumbo telling a story and playing some of his favorite music, and even the river gurgling up the side of the house. The work allows the old adage, “if these walls could speak”, to be realized—to allow the house to tell its own story.
This piece is no longer on view. Experience it in the video below.