Winter Fountains

For Parkway 100, the centennial celebration of Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Parkway Council presented Jennifer Steinkamp’s Winter Fountains, a major installation commissioned by the Association for Public Art (aPA). Winter Fountains served as a centerpiece of Parkway 100, which includes more than a year of public events and activities planned by the Parkway Council – a coalition of cultural and educational institutions, businesses and residences in the Parkway Museums District. Winter Fountains was on view along the Parkway from November 30, 2017 – March 18, 2018, nightly from sunset to midnight, and was made possible with major support from the William Penn Foundation.

Inspired by the signature fountains of the Parkway, the installation featured four 13ft-high and 26ft-wide architectural domes – metaphorical winter fountains – that glowed with Steinkamp’s phantasmagoric and dream-like animated video projections. Eight digital animations were projected onto the surface of the domes in distinct hues, whether cool green or blue, or warm red/pink or yellow. The imagery reimagined the formation of electricity in clouds, inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s research and evoking the art and science explorations represented by the Parkway institutions. It was a celebration of scientific inquiry.

“Anyone who’s ever observed water melting and glistening on a piece of ice will get my project,” says Steinkamp. She takes a universal observation in nature and magnifies it into an otherworldly experience.

Layers of animations evoked tiny dust particles colliding to create lightning or to spark static electricity; others depicted water combusting into gas and steam. Asteroid-shaped particles hurled forward in space and liquid droplets contracted and expanded in different colors, motions and sequences. Otherworldly constellations of shapes appeared to be coming at the viewer, moving up and down or changing directions randomly. In one dome, steam seemed to rise in disconcertedly real-looking puffs. Hand-drawn by Steinkamp, cascades of spring flowers also flowed through the animation. From asters and blue bells, to lilies and Solomon’s seals, plus blue-eyed grasses, columbines, dahlias, irises, lobelias, oxeyes, and phloxes – there were 11 flowers featured, and with the exception of dahlias, all are native to Pennsylvania.

The four domes and 16 video projectors were installed along the Parkway at Aviator Park in front of the Franklin Institute, the Rodin Museum grounds near 21st Street, the Park Towne Place Museum Residences, and the Spring Garden Triangle near Eakins Oval, forming a glowing constellation within a mile-long landscape. Made of fiberglass and embedded with glitter, the “fountains” shimmer in the day and glow in the evening.