Coachella 2023: Artist Maggie West on animating "Eden"
Los Angeles artist Maggie West's technique is combining natural subjects in unnatural lighting, and her Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival installation "Eden" is another paradox merging photography, sculpture and images of flowers that are not found in the desert.
"Eden" features West's photos of various flowers on 20 steel sculptures ranging from 6- to 56-feet tall to create what West described as a "larger-than-life garden" that festivalgoers can walk through and interact with, observing the details on each flower as they go.
"We're so used to seeing photos of flowers that are amazing, but I feel like I can contextualize the imagery and have the viewers take a closer look at the details. I thought it might be interesting to create a vibrant garden landscape in an environment that doesn't have these types of plants," West said.
At night, the installation features digital mapping and the garden becomes animated. West said there's a perception about digital mapping that it has to be done on a clean white surface and used the neighboring art installation "Holoflux" by Güvenç Özel as an example.
"I think it's a great opportunity to show that you can do projection mapping on top of existing prints and it doesn't have to be on top of a blank canvas," West said. "I'd like to experiment more with that. I do time lapse animation of flowers moving and other things. It would be cool to combine something like that with my other video work."
This isn't the first time West has created a large-scale installation. In 2020, she made a five-story art piece titled "Spectrum" for the Netflix campus in Los Angeles, which featured 39,000 metal sequins. West has also worked with brands such as Adidas, Google and the Smithsonian and California Academy of Sciences.
Even though she is used to creating extensive art pieces, she admitted there are challenges.
"Anytime you fabricate something large, there's a process in figuring it out. Billboards are blowing photos up all the time and it's no big deal. But I think the challenges are creating unique shapes and then doing a vinyl overlay on top of that. Overall, I think the team did a fantastic job in executing everything and it came out well.
Desert Sun reporter Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment. He can be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com or on Twitter at @bblueskye.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Coachella 2023: Artist Maggie West on animating "Eden"
