Artist Karl Unnasch has created a stained glass dump truck to be placed in Boston’s “The Auto Show” art exhibit, offering a deliberate nod to community construction workers and laborers.
The exhibit consists of both loaned and commissioned works by nationally and internationally renowned artists that explore the “imaginative qualities” of construction and movement through ideas of transportation.
Unnasch’s artwork, titled Operant (An Oldowonk Cataract), is featured in the exhibition to recall the work put in to Boston’s “Big Dig,” a project through which an elevated highway downtown was demolished and rerouted into a tunnel underground.
According to a press release, Unnasch’s work also references the continuum of concepts influencing the human-built environment. The backlit stained glass panels installed in the cab windows and along the sides of the dump box contain imagery depicting various forms of nature’s approach to “building” and “making.” The cascade of backlit chunk glass being dumped out from the back of the truck elicits the possibilities of design and construction.
“‘Operant’ is a work that showcases Unnasch's stained glass construction and evocative folkloric narratives, fusing glass with the hardness and roughness of construction machinery,” Lucas Cowan, Greenway Public Art Curator, said in a press release.
Source: Karl Unnasch / Greenway Conservancy
