Art prof gives new Seattle library a place in the sun

The circles are actually projections, the result of five circular apertures cut into the building’s ceiling. Each aperture is filled by a different color of glass, and the sun shining through the glass produces the projections. Four of the apertures are filled with shades of blue, green and purple, but the fifth is orange. That’s the one that tells the time.

“I enjoyed the color contrast and wanted it to refer to the sun,” Cummins says of the orange circle.

How does the light projection tell the time? Cummins has marked the position of the orange circle at both solar noon and clock noon on the summer solstice using a series of steel screws set into the floor. She will record the projection at the autumn equinox and then connect the solstice and equinox solar noon circles by creating a line of the same screws. Between the spring and autumn equinox, whenever the orange circle crosses this line, it will be solar noon. And just to make sure no one gets confused, the solar noon and clock noon circles are color coded. Cummins has painted the square wells of the screws — red and orange for the solar noon circles and red and yellow for the clock noon ones.

There’s one other element to the total piece — a special mark on the floor for solar noon on Aug. 12. That’s the date the library opened.

For Cummins, the piece is a natural extension of her earlier work, which has often focused on light. She’s done series of photographs that record time through the movement of shadows over regular intervals, and she’s made more traditional sundials, camera obscuras, rainbow machines and periscopes. She’s also co-taught a sundial course with Astronomy Professor Woodruff Sullivan, whom she acknowledges as a key adviser on the library project.

Cummins says she was inspired to create the sundial when she placed a model of the new building on a heliodon, a “sun machine” that simulates the sun’s path for various times of day and year.

“Being able to watch how the light would move through the building, I found really beautiful,” she says. “I often do work that is very site specific and experiential. If this building was on another angle, or in a different geographical location, the piece would look different. This is specific to Montlake Library.”

But there is some precedent for it. Cummins has visited churches in Europe in which astronomers in the 17^th and 18^th centuries installed aperture sundials with bronze inlays on the floor to indicate solar noon. This practice is well documented in a book by John Heilbron called The Sun in the Church.

An explanation of the library art is provided on a plaque on the wall, with further information available in a binder at the counter. But library patrons and employees are likely to enjoy following the colored circles for no other reason that that they’re pretty. They’ll move from the lobby to the wall of the staircase that leads to the west entrance over the course of a day. And they’ll move inexorably northward as the days advance to the fall equinox. After that, the sun will be low enough in the sky that the projections will be blocked by ceiling beams. But they’ll reappear in the spring, a powerful portent of the longer days ahead.

Cummins has been working on the piece off and on since 2003, when she was chosen by the library to execute the “1 percent for art” project. It’s her first public art project, and she’s satisfied with the result.

“Realizing a project is usually much more work than you ever imagine, but I enjoy the idea that this is here, kind of quietly moving,” she says. “I’ve seen people walk in and say, ‘Wow, what’s that, how does it work?’ I love hearing their responses.”

What’s next for Cummins? She’ll be exhibiting a singing rainbow making machine in the Shanghai Biennale in September. But after that, perhaps more work with the sun, in the most unlikely of places. “I’ve applied for a residency in Antarctica, she says. “Antarctica is unique geographically and astronomically — it would be a wonderful place to document.”