Holographic artist Ed Wesly tells the narrative of how his installation of holographic tiles for a festival in Chicago was commissioned, constructed, and then immediately vandalized in this tale of creation, devastation, and hope. and what he intends to do to address it.
Ed Wesly is a self-taught holographic artist who has lectured on the subject at a number of colleges and universities, including Lake Forest College, Columbia College, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The 2022 Wicker Park Fest art organizers in Chicago, Illinois hired Ed and his partner John E. Bannon to erect a pyramid with the working title "Rainbow Projecting Hologram Tiles" that would stand around 4 meters tall.
Ed said when asked to explain holographic tiles, "Our tiles may be thought of as holograms not of an object but of the focussing qualities of a lens and the dispersion capabilities of a prism." A rainbow will be focused on the ground, or on anybody or anything standing in the right place, as sunlight passes through a flat plastic tile. Ed and John drew up a maquette of the pyramid to show the impression that visitors (and animals) going through the exhibit would perceive as part of their proposal to the festival curators.
The pair put a lot of effort into creating the pyramid's structure out of Dexion, the slotted angle iron used in warehouse shelves, and recording about 100 HOEs (Ed refers to them as Holographic Optical Embellishments rather than Holographic Optical Elements). Construction was completed in Ed's home studio two days before the piece was scheduled to be installed.
Pyramid (Ed Wesly and John E. Bannon) at their home studio.
The pyramid was brought to the festival site on Milwaukee Avenue, which is packed with shops, eateries, and art galleries, on the day the festival officially opened. The two were too exhausted to take pictures after building the Rainbow Projecting Hologram Tiles, but they anticipated to document the article on the next day.
That, however, was not intended to happen. The following morning, when the pair came back, they discovered that a roving group of vandals had taken a self-portrait in front of the Pyramid after the Fest had ended for the evening, leaped onto the side of the Dexion, managed to bend the industrial grade angle iron frame, and brought down the pyramid. The pyramid was impassable, but it nevertheless allowed rainbows to appear in the sunshine almost defiantly!
(John E. Bannon and Ed Wesly) Flattened Pyramid
You can imagine how disappointed Ed and John were. They erected a fence around the exhibit and posted a notice describing the Prismatic Pyramid's condition and pledging to fight it.
To fully record The Pyramid, display its extraordinary features to interested parties, take it on the road to other festivals, or perhaps even find a permanent home, Ed added, "We need to reconstruct The Pyramid." Considering that just roughly a third of the original item is still useable, it must effectively be reconstructed from scratch. In addition to being needed for the construction, extra metal and plastic must be purchased in order to make new holographic tiles.
As a result, Ed has launched a crowdsourcing project on Kickstarter called "The Resurrection of The Rainbow Projecting Pyramid" in an effort to generate money to restart the edifice.
In addition to knowing that they are preventing the destruction of a work of art, each donor will also receive a triangular tile made from the installation's remnants, which Ed has dubbed "The Paralyzed Pyramid," as well as a brand-new tile from the next batch of tiles being produced for "The New Prismatic Pyramid," which will be an uncut sheet of rainbow-projecting hologram film measuring 35 cm by 43 cm. The concept is that donors may place them anywhere they like in their homes to transform sunlight into rainbows.
