Art & Sculpture

Midland Theatre

December 15, 2016/in Art & Sculpture, Exterior Architecture Historic, Performance Center, Renovation, Restoration Kansas City BNIM Tom Corbin Gold, Orange S 1987 /by cmorris

Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland

Midland Theatre is a historic 3,573-seat theater located in the Power & Light District of Kansas City, Missouri. The building was originally designed by Boller Bros, and has at various states been restored and renovated.

In 1987, Zahner was brought in by BNIM and and artist Tom Corbin to develop the custom architectural metal for the historic theater’s restoration.
Working from historic photographs, Zahner worked to carefully detail new fabricated components for the building’s metal marquee. Zahner artisans fabricated these parts in sheet brass and muntz, working to integrate the molded brass features cast by Tom Corbin in his foundry.
The end result is a golden marquee which resonates with the building’s original 1927 appearance.

Midtown Theatre Marquee restored to its 1927 appearance.

Restored Midland Theatre in the early 1990's.

Zahner fabricators put the finishing touches on the Midtown canopy

Detail of the cast bronze, brass and sheet Muntz Metal fabrication.

1 3 5 7 9 11

December 14, 2016/in Art & Sculpture Public Art, Sculpture Kansas City Sol LeWitt White M 1994 /by cmorris

Sol Lewitt sculpture, 1 3 5 7 9 11

The Sol LeWitt sculpture 1 3 5 7 9 11 is a commission by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art which was engineered and manufactured by Zahner in Kansas City. The artwork is a painted aluminum form which measures 16′ x 8′ x 8′ and was fabricated in 1996. The artist conceived of the work in 1994.

Zahner engineered and fabricated an interlocking system where each corner connects seamlessly. Instead of requiring a weld at the joint’s seam, the pieces are connected with an interior locking mechanism.

Related Project

One Sun / 34 Moons

In addition to the architectural features, a large scale site-specific artwork by Walter de Maria was commissioned by the Museum. Zahner was brought on as fabricator for the installation by the famed land artist. The work, entitled One Sun / 34 Moons, is made up of thirty-four 'Moons' which are realized as illuminated glass fixtures scattered throughout the installation.

1 3 5 7 9 11 at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

Process photo during the art fabrication at Zahner in Kansas City.

1 3 5 7 9 11 at the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

Detail of the aluminum joint prior to painting during the art fabrication process.

Above, a detail of the seamless engineered connection, a result of careful engineering and high-quality craftsmanship. This is the last sculpture of its kind fabricated during the artist’s lifetime.

Celestial Flyways

December 14, 2016/in Art & Sculpture, Landscape Architecture Kinetic Art, Public Art, Sculpture Kansas City Davison Architecture + Urban Design Laura DeAngelis Black, Blue, Indigo S 2008 /by cmorris

Star Disk and Celestial Flyways at Oppenstein Park

Celestial Flyways is a permanent interactive and kinetic artwork made through collaboration with Zahner art fabrication team. The public space includes a central piece by Laura DeAngelis entitled Star Disk, as well as a number of embedded stainless steel artworks inlayed in the concrete pavers. The artwork coincided with a complete redesign and rebuilding of Oppenstein Brothers Memorial Park at 12th and Walnut in downtown Kansas City. The park was dedicated April 18, 2008 and named Celestial Flyways to celebrate the natural environment of the Kansas City area.

The artwork was developed by artist Laura DeAngelis in collaboration with Peregrine Honig with the leadership of Davison Architecture + Urban Design. The piece was commissioned by the Art in the Loop Foundation, a metropolitan organization of business and civic leaders with a continuing mission to enhance central Kansas City with public art.

Star Disk has a number of built-in features which align with the stars and sky. The stars are revealed through holes in the disks filled by acrylic lenses which are lit from below. Drawings of the mythological characters associated with the constellations are etched on to the surface of the disk. Park visitors rotate the star disk to a date and time with a motor operated by buttons on the base.

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“I wanted to shift people’s perceptions and encourage a different kind of awareness of the space, reconnecting the park to the sky directly overhead and the continuous rhythms of the natural world, which are so easy to lose sight of in the middle of the city.

Laura deAngelisArtist.at

According to Astrolabe.org, the anaphoric Star Disk in the park is very likely the largest and most accurate astronomical machine of this type ever made. The ten foot diameter disk contains the positions of 457 stars in 50 constellations.

In addition to the Star Disk, a number of inlayed birds are scattered throughout the landscape of the Celestial Flyways park, pictured below. These were CNC-cut and etched by Zahner with artist renderings of birds.

This project was a cooperative venture between the city of Kansas City and Jackson Country Parks and Recreation. It required two years of work, the talents of at least 150 people at a cost of nearly $500,000, much of which was donated.

More information can be learned about the process, history, and installation of Celestial Flyways at the Astrolabes.org website.

A Great Place to Land

December 14, 2016/in Art & Sculpture Public Art Overland Park--Kansas Gary Kahle Silver M /by cmorris

A Great Place to Land in Downtown Overland Park

A Great Place to Land is an artwork by Gary Kahle located in Overland Park which was made using Zahner art fabrication services. Completed in 2006, the sculpture projects into the sky at the intersection of Conser and Santa Fe Drive. The permanent outdoor public artwork depicts two birds flying upwards in unison, and the work was provided by the Arts and Recreation Foundation of Overland Park in Overland Park, Kansas.

Zahner worked closely with Kahle to manufacture A Great Place to Land. Kahle came to the company’s headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri with a small maquette and worked directly with Zahner engineers and craftsmen to translate the maquette’s form into a 17-foot polished stainless steel form. The accomplished sculptor has worked with Zahner on a number of sculptural projects over the years.

Hope For Life

December 14, 2016/in Art & Sculpture Public Art, Sculpture Kansas City Larry Young L 2000 /by cmorris

Hope For Life Sculpture at the Stowers Institute

Hope for Life is a permanent artwork at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, made by artist Larry Young using Zahner art fabrication. The artwork was completed through close collaboration with A. Zahner Company, whose engineers and fabricators transformed his concept into a larger-than-life sculpture.

Young’s concept for the sculpture was based off of a bronze casting which conveys the idea of the human form through an abstracted DNA double helix. After selecting Zahner to fabricate the artwork, Young provided the casting to Zahner engineers. The engineering team at Zahner developed a cloud map of the surface geometry, unfolding the forms and translating them into flat parts. These parts were produced in the Zahner shop using CNC equipment where they were assembled, welded and polished to create a seamless surface.

The artwork is installed at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri.

The stainless steel artwork rises 32' and sits on a base of the same material.

A human figure stands for scale at the base of the sculpture.

Detail of the Hope for Life sculpture in Kansas City.

Douglas Avenue Bridge

December 14, 2016/in Art & Sculpture Public Art, Sculpture Wichita--Kansas GLMV Architecture Vicki Scuri Silver L 2000 /by cmorris

Douglas & Lewis Street Bridges, Light Towers and Railings

The Douglas and Lewis Street Bridges are a pair of bridge artworks by Vicki Scuri Site Works. The two bridges are located a few blocks from one another, and each bridge features a series of sculptural forms, rising more than 65 feet above the Arkansas River in Wichita, Kansas. Zahner provided art fabrication for the project, working closely with Scuri and the design team to realize this work of public art for the City of Wichita.

Designed in collaboration with Mark Spitzer Designs, the artworks are each made up of a number of stainless steel tower forms with lighting systems. The forms were inspired by Wichita’s aeronautical heritage and the Jayhawk sail boat, an America’s Cup competitor that is permanently installed adjacent to the bridge at the city’s historic boathouse. The towers allude to the ship’s bow and billowing sail, creating a ceremonial space for pedestrians crossing the bridge, and a beautiful site for the city’s river festival.

Zahner engineers modeled and enhanced Scuri’s initial design, and the massive light towers were fabricated from stainless steel extrusions. The public artworks were installed in 2000.

Looking up through the tower's stainless steel forms.

Stainless steel sail towers at the Lewis Street Bridge.

The Douglas Street Bridge project, during construction.

Pro Patria Mori

December 14, 2016/in Art & Sculpture, Landscape Architecture Memorial, Passive Security, Public Art Kansas City Ellen Driscoll M 2006 /by cmorris

Pro Patria Moria: Security gates for WW1 Memorial

Pro Patria Moria is a permanent artwork by Ellen Driscoll made using Zahner art fabrication services. Completed in 2006, the public work consists of two panoramic gates that form the entrance to the Liberty Memorial Mall and The National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri.

Driscoll worked collaboratively with team at A. Zahner Company to design, engineer, and fabricate the gates. Each of the massive gates have a frieze inlaid with mosaic tiles. Beneath the frieze, laser cut steel panels depict soldiers marching, creating a panorama viewable from inside and outside Liberty Memorial Mall. The museum archives inspired the gates’ imagery while a line in Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” inspired the name for the work.

When the gates are open, they create an 80’ long panorama; when closed, they form two separate panoramas, visible from both the approach to the site, and when leaving. The archives of the museum provide the main source for the glass mosaic imagery, along with images of the artist’s two grandfathers who fought in World War 1, and trench maps from their scrapbooks.

Detail of the metal gate system with ceramic inlay by the artist Ellen Driscoll.

Detail of the metal gate system with ceramic inlay.

Detail of the laser-cut stainless steel gate system.

Detail of the photomosaic and perforated metal.

Concept drawing from the artist Ellen Driscoll.

Related Project

911 Memorial Overland Park

Gehry Horse Head

December 14, 2016/in Art & Sculpture, Interior Architecture Education, Sculpture, Workplace Northeastern United States, Princeton--New Jersey Frank Gehry Partners Blue-grey, Grey M, S 1997 /by cmorris

Frank Gehry Horse Head Conference Room at Princeton University

Zahner worked for long-time partner Frank Gehry to construct the original “horse head” sculpture and conference room, which now is on display at Princeton University.

Sheets of lead were hammer-formed over a plywood structure which encases a semi-private meeting space for students at Princeton University, pictured below. This was the first use of the horse motif by Frank Gehry. He would later produce a nearly identical form for the DG Bank building in Berlin nearly twice the size.

World-Architects’ John Hill profiled the sculpture at Princeton University in 2015, and discussed some of the history of the project.

“Yet Gehry did not design the sculptural “horse’s head” piece for Princeton, or as a conference room. It was to be a small part of a huge 22,000-square-foot (2,044-sm) residence for Peter B. Lewis in Lyndhurst, Ohio, but after ten years of numerous iterations the project was cancelled. Luckily a mockup, framed in wood and covered in lead, found a second life in the Icahn Lab, providing a suitable contrast to Rafael Viñoly’s curved glass wall and two-story atrium.”

— John Hill, World Architects

Related Project

Weatherhead School

The 22 ga stainless steel surface resembles an undulating, unbroken ribbon. Finished in #4 satin, the surface is more reflective than Angel Hair or GB-60 but less diffuse than a mirror-finish.

Frank Gehry Horse sculpture at Gagosian Gallery.

Installation of the horse head sculpture at Gagosian.

Frank Gehry with model for Parc des Ateliers.

Second version of the sculpture made for the DZ Bank building in Berlin

Heartland Harvest

December 14, 2016/in Art & Sculpture Public Art Kansas City Gastinger Walker Harden Joel Marquardt 1999 /by cmorris

Heartland Harvest: The Kansas City Board of Trade

Heartland Harvest, designed by Joel Marquardt of Gastinger Walker Harden Architects, was installed on the Kansas City Board of Trade Building in 1999. Joel Marquardt worked with A. Zahner Company to create a custom fabrication method for the final 60-foot tall sculpture.

Marquardt came to Zahner with a miniature maquette, which Zahner engineers recreated in an enhanced digital model. Zahner craftsmen and engineers designed a custom “on-off” press to recreate the maquette’s exact indents in Star Blue patinated copper.

Related Project

Daeyang Gallery

The firm has developed a growing number of works with Zahner, starting with the the Studio Libeskind-designed Contemporary Jewish Museum in which WRNS served as Architect of Record. Since then, Zahner has worked with WRNS on a number of projects, develop their unique design concepts into custom architectural systems, featured below.

Heartland Harvest at the Kansas City Board of Trade.

Detail of the copper panels made for Heartland Harvest.

Night image of the Heartland Harvest at the Kansas City Board of Trade.

Ohio Holocaust and Liberators Memorial

December 9, 2016/in Art & Sculpture Memorial, Sculpture Columbus--Ohio Studio Libeskind Brown, Red M 2014 /by cmorris

The Ohio Holocaust and Liberators Memorial

This Ohio Holocaust and Liberators is a Daniel Libeskind-designed memorial which was manufactured and built by Zahner. The memorial was conceived to serve the millions who lost their lives in the Holocaust and the American soldiers who liberated those in concentration camps. The design by Studio Daniel Libeskind provides a space of contemplation, a place where ideas and values cut across generations, ethnic identity, and creed.

Approaching from the Statehouse, the visitor walks on a limestone walkway between inclined, graduated stone walls and two stone benches towards a pair of large 18-ft-high bronze panels. Embossed with a story told by a survivor of Auschwitz, the panels are also irregularly angled at their inner edges. The planes meet in the center, the jagged edges forming a cutout in the shape of a six-pointed star.

“The bronze book achieves an incredible sense of dynamism as each surface twists and turns, leaving no two surfaces parallel… In many ways, this project comes as much from Libeskind’s heart as from his hand.” — Architect’s Newspaper

The Ohio Holocaust and Liberators Memorial is a welcome place for reflection on public ground. Upon one of its stone walls, this line honoring the camp liberators is engraved: “If you save one life, it is as if you saved the world.”