Work is underway on Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s Fallen Star, the latest installation in the Stuart Collection. Under an agreement that dates to 1982, any location on UC San Diego’s 1200 acre campus may be considered for placement of commissioned sculptures. Counted among the 17 completed pieces to date are a 600 foot walking path that looks like a giant snake from above and a 23 foot tall, 180 ton bear fashioned from granite boulders.
Suh’s Fallen Star follows the spirit of thinking on such a large scale – in the piece, he imagines an entire house being lifted from the ground and dropped onto the roof atop the seventh floor of Jacobs Hall at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. While it hangs off the edge of the existing building, a rooftop garden will lead up to the sculpture, reminiscent of a suburban front yard.
The artist is using the concept to explore feelings of displacement and the meaning of “home.” Suh himself remembers feeling as though he had been “dropped from the sky,” when he first arrived in the United States to study at the Rhode Island School of Design.
“Fallen Star can be seen as a kind of ‘home’ for the students who have left their homes to come to the university,” adds Mary Beebe, director of the Stuart Collection.
Measuring 15 by 18 feet, the house itself is a three-quarter scale model of a small home in Providence, Rhode Island. Construction is currently taking place in Warren Mall, in front of the installation site. Workers are hoping to hoist the house into position by November 3, with the rooftop landscaping and the interior of the house (including furnishings) finished by the end of the year.
Work is underway on Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s Fallen Star, the latest installation in the Stuart Collection. Under an agreement that dates to 1982, any location on UC San Diego’s 1200 acre campus may be considered for placement of commissioned sculptures. Counted among the 17 completed pieces to date are a 600 foot walking path that looks like a giant snake from above and a 23 foot tall, 180 ton bear fashioned from granite boulders.
Suh’s Fallen Star follows the spirit of thinking on such a large scale – in the piece, he imagines an entire house being lifted from the ground and dropped onto the roof atop the seventh floor of Jacobs Hall at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. While it hangs off the edge of the existing building, a rooftop garden will lead up to the sculpture, reminiscent of a suburban front yard.
The artist is using the concept to explore feelings of displacement and the meaning of “home.” Suh himself remembers feeling as though he had been “dropped from the sky,” when he first arrived in the United States to study at the Rhode Island School of Design.
“Fallen Star can be seen as a kind of ‘home’ for the students who have left their homes to come to the university,” adds Mary Beebe, director of the Stuart Collection.
Measuring 15 by 18 feet, the house itself is a three-quarter scale model of a small home in Providence, Rhode Island. Construction is currently taking place in Warren Mall, in front of the installation site. Workers are hoping to hoist the house into position by November 3, with the rooftop landscaping and the interior of the house (including furnishings) finished by the end of the year.