Firmament Arch by Eric Rannestad: Firmament Arch is part of a growing series of work about the constructed qualities of climate change and our relationship to the natural world in the face of ecological collapse. The series reimagines cosmological structures of the past: the pillars of heaven, the firmament, the great deep, the ocean of heaven, etc. as architectural backbones of our future infrastructure and defining forces in our relationship to nature.
In religious cosmology, the sky was conceptualized as a physical structure – a firmament – that separated earth from the oceans of heavens. Firmament Arch references the architecture of our increasingly necessary biodomes and greenhouses and reimagines them as the firmament structures of tomorrow. The curved backbone of the work houses a network of tanks, tubes, pumps, and nozzles that form an aeroponic growing environment, allowing plants to grow in irregular and confined spaces with minimal water waste or reliance on natural light.
© Images from Eric Rannestad
Completed with the Clowes Fund Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center. April 2019.
Eric Rannestad (b. 1996, Connecticut) is a Washington based artist making work about the built environment and the systems humans use to compartmentalize the natural world. Eric received his BA in Art and Economics from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. He has attended fellowships and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, North Cascades Institute, New York Arts Practicum, and Shell House Residency. His research in environmental economics is critical to his art practice and Eric’s ongoing work for environmental and conservation groups is a strong influence in his work.
