The latest large-scale sculpture installed on campus was designed for viewers to walk through on the way to the College of Pharmacy. Another,  a mosaic wall, is visible through floor-to-ceiling windows at the Psychological and Brain Sciences Building.

The University of Iowa community is fond of its public art:These new works join 116 other pieces that comprise the university’s Art on Campus collection. From 1979 to 2017, buildings on campus were required by the UI Art in State Buildings Program to spend 0.5% of the project’s total cost on associated public art. This requirement was repealed by the Iowa Legislature in 2017. However, with public art works already included in plans and budgets, the acquisitions and installations continued.

“Moving forward, our intent is to expand the role art plays within the campus built environment, both inside and outside,” says Shawn Albaugh Kleppe, Art on Campus program coordinator.

Synthesis
Donald Letendre, dean of the UI College of Pharmacy, was a driving force behind the installation of a large-scale exterior sculpture for the college’s building, which opened in January. He wanted it to speak to people of all ages and backgrounds. 

Actual Size Artworks, comprising sculptors Gail Simpson and Aristotle Georgiades, built a giant, exploded mortar and pestle as a beacon to draw in visitors. Retaining walls surrounding the sculpture are imprinted with excerpts from the poem “Remember,” chosen because it expresses a strong connection to nature and was written by U.S. Poet Laureate and Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumna Joy Harjo. 

“Plants, trees, and shrubs serve as the foundation for our profession. That’s where the earliest drugs came from,” Letendre says. “The juxtaposition of the ravine and pharmacologically active plant life in the medicinal gardens and the cutting-edge science and discovery that we have in our brand-new facility is brought together in the exploding mortar and pestle that provides a symbolic gateway from past to present.”

Medicinal gardens lining the path inspired the creation of Synthesis.

“You can walk through the sculpture, along a path surrounded by plants, and the idea is that where people and plants come together, medicine results,” Simpson says.

The Brain in the Mirror
An expansive entry in the UI’s new Psychological and Brain Sciences Building provided artist Lynn Basa with an immense space in which to develop a an eye-catching work.

Basa was asked to develop a piece that communicated and showcased the concept of understanding the human mind and brain as the next frontier of science. The Brain in the Mirror is a reflection of what happens when sparks fly inside the brain to make us who we are. “What the science of the brain really entails is the brain looking at itself,” Basa says, something she found fascinating, inspiring, and full of mystery.

The blue areas of the mosaic loosely reference the brain. The sparking of the human brain as it thinks is represented by iridescent glass.

“The golden aura on the right side of the artwork is the inspiration and ingenuity in each of us, attempting to tackle what makes us tick,” Basa says. The human beings who will see the work as they enter or peer inside the building, are represented by the gold sparkles that look across an expanse of mystery and interpret what’s happening inside the brain.