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| Exhibition - Pulse Dome Project: Art and Design by Don ZanFagna |
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Event Description
This exhibition will present a series of paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and 3-D models by Don ZanFagna that explicate the futuristic concept of “growing your own house.” Conceived in the 1970s, the artist imagined a home created, constructed, and maintained by all-organic processes and in perfect harmony with nature.
Don ZanFagna is an artist, architect, and designer whose lifework both defies established categories and challenges rote notions of the role of the artist in society. Now in his eighties, ZanFagna retired near Charleston, South Carolina. His family, at present, is uncovering a vast trove of writings, drawings, photographs, artworks, collages, models, and ephemera that the artist amassed over his long work life, much of which will be seen in this exhibition.
Through a remarkable journey of discovery, chronicled in dozens of densely illustrated and annotated sketchbooks, ZanFagna became obsessed with the idea of designing a form of sustainable architecture that was in harmony with natural processes—a structure he called the Pulse Dome. From roughly 1971 through 1995, he researched world indigenous architectures, insect architecture, wombs, and such natural forms as caves, tunnels, and volcanoes, along with other structures, to learn what had been done already and what was still likely to be accomplished by others in relation to sustainable human architecture. Among other lines of inquiry, he investigated Palladio’s notebooks (which were, as we now know, an amalgam of many other architects’ notes) to try to unlock the secrets of the Egyptians’ sacred geometric harmonies.
The exhibition and publication Pulse Dome Project: Art and Design by Don ZanFagna has been made possible by generous grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Lucille Thompson Foundation. |
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Admission Information
Free and open to the public.
Monday through Saturday 11am to 4pm.
Now open until 7pm on Thursdays.
Free guided tours are available for any interested party. Just call us! |
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