Pipe Dream
was erected in 2012 by London-born artist Tim Bavington. The work sits at the east end of Symphony Park near downtown Las Vegas, where the artist lives and works. Bavington transforms musical scores into vertical bans of color. This particular piece is a translation ofAmerican composer Aaron Copland’s 20th century classic Fanfare for the Common Man. The sculpture is comprised of 128 vertical stainless steel pipes that create a wall approximately 80 feet in length. Every two feet represents a bar in the musical score. The pipes are painted with a total of 19 colors, which are used to translate various notes — for example B-flat is blue/green and D is orange.
My interest in this work is the exploration into the connection between our visual and auditory experiences. Just as musical notes of various lengths played sequentially within a particular composition can elicit a profound experience, so can pipes of various, colors, diameters and heights. Whether this sculpture is the visual equivalent of the musical score is debatable; however, the impact of Bavington’s elemental composition is not.
What makes his work even more interesting are the tools he has developed to investigate this connection between auditory and visual compositions. His paintings are developed with a custom easel that resembles a vertical loom. The contraption lets the artist apply paint in accurate intervals, allowing him to look past the mechanics of applying paint on canvas and focus on the relationships and experiences that develop between the colored bands themselves. Some argue that the story of human knowledge can be told through the tools we develop. The telescope and microscope are examples of tools that allow us to see and experience the world in greater detail, which has in turn led to greater understanding. Why would the tools that artists develop and use be any different?