Category Archives: Outdoor Sculptures

Leo Villareal Microcosm Illuminated!

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We are so excited to have the Leo Villareal sculpture Microcosm re-illuminated!

Microcosm (2007) by Leo Villareal is a site-specific permanent installation. It consists of thousands of white LEDs, custom software, electrical wiring and hardware. It was re-illuminated in April 2025 after a years-long effort to completely restore the work.

Leo Villareal, Microcosm

Fusing art and technology, Leo Villareal’s Microcosm is part of the cantilevered entrance of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. The artwork’s 60,000 light-emitting diodes (LEDs) shift and swirl to create countless patterns dictated by a computer program created by the artist: “I create the conditions and see what interesting things happen,” Villareal says. “There is never the exact same repetition of patterns.”

This extraordinary union of art and architecture came together before the museum even opened the doors in 2007. Villareal and his team worked with Kyu Sung Woo Architects and J.E. Dunn Construction during the construction of the building to install the work.

“The LED is a remarkable piece of technology, allowing limitless possibilities in light sculptures,” Villareal said. He writes code, based on an old game program (John Conway’s Game of Life), and uses formulae to vary the parameters for the light. Even under the prescribed conditions, the movement constantly changes. “Even though you might recognize a sequence of lights, there is always a variation in its velocity or the number of times it is repeated.”

 

Villareal is inspired by rules, chaos theory and nature, where small particles build together and then break apart like ocean waves crashing against land. Similarly in his installations, light fractals cluster together, then diminish and eventually disappear. “Light has a primal effect. I hope the work captures people’s attention, then as they look at it longer, they see more and more in it. People will have different experiences with the piece. They will see it very legibly from the road, and as they approach the front of the museum, they will see it at different scales. I want the piece to give the museum a sense of life and animation. I want it to give the sense that something exciting is going on inside the building.”

In addition to the Nerman Museum’s piece, Villareal has a permanent installation in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and has installed temporary pieces worldwide including on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and on 15 bridges spanning the Thames in London. His sculpture, Fountain (KCI) 2023, is prominently featured at the Kansas City Airport.

Leo Villareal received a BA from Yale University in 1990, and an MPS from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University in 1994.

Judith Shea, Between Thought and Feeling

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A sculpture that is sometimes overlooked on campus because of its location tucked between the Library and the Classroom and Lab Building, Judith Shea’s Between Thought and Feeling offers a quiet moment of reflection for those who stop to look.

Judith Shea (b. 1948)
Between Thought and Feeling, 1988
Bronze and cast stone

The artists website here: Judith Shea

An essay on the piece by KU Art History Professor David Cateforis: Judith Shea essay by David Cateforis

An article here in artforum that discusses her work and also specifically addresses this sculpture: JUDITH SHEA’S CONTEMPORARY KOREA (artforum.com)

A quote from the article linked above: “In Between Thought and Feeling, 1988, the same bronze sheath form—more clearly than ever identified with the artist—again sits Madonna-like on a large cube, holding an antique head of Alexander the Great that springs up like a phallus from her lap. This once-powerful male ruler is decapitated, however, reduced here to an item of display subordinate to the maternal figure. Here it is the artist/mother who has both mastered and assimilated the past, which can now be offered lovingly but somewhat poignantly as a kind of trophy.”

Zielinski sculpture on campus fully installed once more!

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You may have noticed that in the last year the Andrzej Zieliński sculpture on campus, ὀμφαλός (Omphalos) Syndrome (2017), was incomplete – the wooden slab at the top and center of the sculpture was missing. This was due to an ongoing restoration effort to install the wooden portion such that it will be highly resistant to wind (this is something we need to be mindful of in Kansas!) The museum’s preparatory team re-installed the wooden portion of the work with a new system securing it to the stone base so that it will now stand the test of time – and 50mph winds!

Check it out next time you are over on that side of campus, near the sports fields and just outside the Career and Technical Education Center (CTEC) building.

The title here ὀμφαλός (Omphalos) Syndrome references the belief (perhaps misguided) that a place of geopolitical power is the most important place in the world. Among the Ancient Greeks, it was believed that the city of Delphi held this central significance. According to myth, Zeus placed the sacred omphalos stone at Delphi, designating it as the center of the Earth. In this sculpture, the wooden slap is placed perpendicular to the large stone base that is perched atop a tangle of bright green metal zigzag lines. Technology is a common theme in Zielinski’s work, and here the arrangement of the parts of the sculpture could suggest a laptop with the screen open and the green maze of lines representing the electrical signals conveying information to and from the device. Is Zielinski suggesting that our devices have become portals to the most significant ‘place’ in our current moment – the online world?

For more information about Zielinski and his inspirations, check out the exhibition page from his 2015 solo exhibition at the Nerman Museum:  Andrzej Zielinski · Open Sourced | Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

Galileo’s Garden Noon at the Nerman Presentation

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The Nerman Museum, alongside Johnson County Community College’s Art History department , hosts the Noon At The Nerman series. Noon at the Nerman is a weekly interdisciplinary program examining works of art on view at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art or on campus. Students and staff gather at the museum or at other locations around the campus on select Wednesdays at noon, then go to a specific artwork to hear a JCCC  faculty or staff member speak briefly on that work of art.

Listen to Doug Patterson’s Noon at the Nerman Presentation about Dale Eldred’s Galileo’s Garden.

During the talk about, Dr. Patterson’s referenced Prof. Paul Tebbe’s work with the analemma. Since then, they have uncovered a video Prof. Tebbe’s public talk demonstrating the analemma and the overlay he and his students made for the sculpture.

Information on this post was adapted from JCCC’s Astronomy blog.