Q&A: Inside artist Esteban Garcia Bravo’s new ‘Pearl of the Wabash’

Ahead of Thursday’s dedication at Tapawingo Park, how light, 3D printing and data straight from the Wabash River play into a new sculpture from West Lafayette’s artist-in-residence project

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Q&A: INSIDE ARTIST ESTEBAN GARCIA BRAVO’S NEW ‘PEARL OF THE WABASH’

Tuesday morning, Esteban Garcia Bravo was still touching up pieces of “Pearl of the Wabash,” waiting on an electrician to arrive to finish some wiring and cleaning parts of the 3D-printed concrete, mussel-shaped sculpture he and others have been assembling over the past 10 days in West Lafayette’s Tapawingo Park.

“Almost there,” Garcia Bravo, a former assistant professor of computer graphics technology at Purdue, said, as his wife, Nandi Marocco, and volunteer Laura Sanz helped. “Still, things to do.”

The piece northeast of the city’s Riverside Skating Center, just up from the banks of the Wabash River, is part of a five-year, $50,000 artist-in-residency initiated by the city in 2021 and managed by The Arts Federation.

“After an international call for qualifications, Esteban and his team were selected among a very competitive group of applicants to serve as resident artist for a five-year period, beginning in 2022,” Tetia Lee, CEO of The Arts Federation, said.

During a test run for the lights this week for ‘Pearl of the Wabash.’ (Photo courtesy of Esteban Garcia Bravo)

Garcia Bravo, who left Purdue to start teaching at San Jose State at the start of this academic year, had spent more than a decade in Greater Lafayette creating installations featuring a mix of sculpture, light and sound. He and others were part of a 2016 project, the Geode Interactive Sculpture, that had light-and-sound performances on the John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge and the Tippecanoe County Amphitheater. He also helped lead a team that projected a light and soundscape show on the Tippecanoe County Courthouse for the 2022 Taste of Tippecanoe.

“Pearl of the Wabash” combines some of those elements in a sculpture that can be climbed on and that takes its lighting cues from temperatures and other data collected over the years from the Wabash River.

A dedication ceremony will be at 3 p.m. Thursday – even if, as Garcia Bravo points out, landscaping work around the piece still needs to be finished.

Here, he talks about elements of the sculpture and how they came together over the past three years.

Question: How did this all get going?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: This project started through an artist in residence program that the city of West Lafayette had. It was an open national call. Then for the past three years, we've been working on concepts. We first decided on a location. That was almost a one-year process.

Question: Were there other places you had in mind?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: Yeah. We looked into what the city of West Lafayette owned around here. We showed the West Lafayette Public Art Team all the possibilities. We narrowed down more to this area, which is becoming more of an urban area, with all these developments. We settled for Tapawingo Park. Then we did some studies with the community on what is important to you. Like, what do you care about? This thing of the Wabash River kept coming up. And because of the location …

Question: You can see it right there from this vantage point.

Esteban Garcia Bravo: You can. So, we also thought, let's make it themed on the Wabash. It seems like it's a very wonderful gift in our community that we want to highlight. I started volunteering with the Wabash Sampling Blitz with the (Wabash River Enhancement Corp.) people, having lots of conversations about the work that they're doing.

Esteban Garcia Bravo, right, and Nandi Marocco and Laura Sanz, along with ‘Pearl of the Wabash,’ as installation continued on the sculpture this week. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

Question: How many of those sampling blitzes did you do?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: I did three. It was cool, because I became aware of the data part – all these data that the volunteers have been collecting since 2012. That became the material for this project. The lights are programmed to present that data. We’re using the data to produce the colors.

Question: What data were you plugging into this project?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: We had a lot. We had the temperature, turbidity, nitrates, pH, E. coli. So, a lot of different data points.

Question: All collected up and down this part of the Wabash?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: They’re collected all around the Wabash, from all the sampling sites. We got those from WREC, and then I basically use the spreadsheet to program the code.

Question: So, what are you seeing when you see the lights? Is it more temperature or pH or how murky or clear things are?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: There's a website and a QR code that is going to go with this that shows people what everything means. We kind of narrowed it down to, what do we want people to know about the river? We settled for temperature, whether if it's spring or fall – because there are two sampling blitzes each year – and the turbidity. Those three are the rings that are showing on the sculpture. So with the temperature changes, I think it's an important message about how those temperatures are rising in a way we can already see in 12 years, gradually, when the samples were taken.

Question: So, an ecological feel for this, directly tied to the river?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: Definitely. Also, to invite people to get engaged with WREC and get involved with the sampling blitz. There could be more. If there was more sampling, we would get a better picture of our river’s health.

Question: How does all that data feed into this? You say there’ll be a website the explains what someone is seeing with the colors?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: Yeah, people will be able to see the colors and what the colors mean in terms of a few data points from the river – kind of like a key. But they don’t have to look at the website. They can just enjoy it, too.

Question: Tell me about the structure of the piece and the concept.

Esteban Garcia Bravo: The shell, this is a Wabash River freshwater mussel. One of the cool things that we discovered through this study with the community was that the mussel is one of the most endangered species in Indiana. And they have a very important role in river health. They actually are like little filters – water filters. It's a very good indicator of river health if you see mussels. So we wanted to highlight the fact that it's an endangered species, but also a symbol of water quality.

Question: And the production of the sculpture?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: We actually went in and created a 3D model of it, and then we started prototyping different fabrication possibilities. It seems simple, but it's a complex build.

Question: It’s built in layers, then?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: Yes. We worked with a company in Utah named Pikus. These are 3D printed concrete. So, it's like the latest technology of digital manufacturers. My Ph.D. student, Yifan Fan, created a solid model for it, and we gave it to the company. We worked over a year on redesigning it. It was a long design process. In August last year, we went to the factory with it.

Question: And that was in Utah. Did they have to build a test run or anything along those lines?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: They printed a prototype and when we were completely set on the design, it was like literally pressing a button. And within a month, they had everything ready and shipped it.

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Question: How did you work in the electronics?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: I worked on the electronics in my studio, where we are now in California. I basically had a program with my six rings of light and designed all the circuits and the coding while this was being fabricated.

Question: You’ve done other interactive installations, incorporating light and sound, in your time in Lafayette. How does this one fit into that style you’ve developed?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: I was just going back thinking about that, and the first time that I used these interactive LEDs was at Foam City (a short-lived performance space near downtown Lafayette). Oddly enough, I'm using the same sensor that I used for a piece that was sort of like a church that you went into and had a sound piece by Aaron Zernack. Here we are, like 13 years later, using the same tech, but with more experience and now in the outdoors. I remember buying all my electrical components over at the double-E building (at Purdue) and experimenting with the different components. All that kind of that led to more and more design. I mean, for an engineer, it's sort of like a simple circuit. But I guess for an artist, it makes it very approachable, if you want to get into electronics.

Question: You talk about 13 years ago with Foam City. How’s it been being back, installing this piece?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: I mean, it's great. I just feel like we're still really part of this community. It's only been like 10 months since we moved, but we have had so many friends here. I think that this is just the first visit. We want to come every year to just hang out and be with our friends and family. So it's really good to have some permanent art here in West Lafayette, because Lafayette and West Lafayette are a big part of my life.

Question: When this is done, is that the end of the residency? Or is there more to come?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: It’s supposed to be five years, so I’m hoping that I can do something else. I’m talking with Tetia about that and it’s up to the city, really. Sure, I would love to continue doing more work here.

Question: Is this piece something people can get into and touch? Or is it a hands-off situation?

Esteban Garcia Bravo: It’s immersive. So, we want people to sit there in the pearl. It is intended for people to have a moment to enjoy the river. Just look at it – just look at the water. Like that Johnny Cash song.

Question: “If It Wasn’t for the Wabash River.”

Esteban Garcia Bravo: That’s it. We were just talking about how it has, like, healing powers. Like when you go on the trail, no matter how bad your day is, you just go on the banks on the Wabash River and it just calms you down.

• If you go: A dedication of the “Pearl of the Wabash” sculpture will be 3 p.m. Thursday, May 29, at Tapawingo Park in West Lafayette. The sculpture northeast of the Riverside Skating Center, 100 Tapawingo Drive.

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