SUN SONATA
ABOUT GENE DAVIS
Gene Davis, 1920-1985, attended the University of Maryland and Wilson Teacher’s College before embarking on an early career as a sportswriter covering the Redskins for the Washington Daily News. He later rose to the position of White House correspondent for Transradio Press in the 1940s. Although Davis was working full time as a writer and editor, a longstanding interest in the visual arts reasserted itself in the early 1950s, and he began to explore the various dimensions of abstractionism in painting. The artist ultimately abandoned his career as a journalist and completely immersed himself in the production and exhibition of his art.
Davis’s expansive stripe works of the 1960s became associated with the capital city’s explosion of abstract color field painting, the founders of which were known as the Washington Color School. As part of the permanent faculty at the Corcoran School of art, Davis became one of the city’s most important and influential art teachers. Davis also taught at American University and the University of Virginia.
Known for his signature stripe paintings which range from micro-paintings to gigantic environmental works of art, Davis was the logical choice to design the solar wall for the Muscarelle Museum of Art. In addition to the solar wall, another work in the Museum’s collection by Davis is his 1982 painting Queen of Hearts. This painting illustrates a technique Davis often used in which he applied paint directly to unprimed canvas, creating a stained effect. The soft-colored vertical stripes, although more subtle than the multicolored tubes of the solar wall, offer a similar rhythmic configuration. The Museum’s collection, that has become an emblem of the function of the Museum as both a repository of great creative achievements and a laboratory for demonstrating artistic innovation.
SUN SONATA
The arrival of dusk in Williamsburg brings to full prominence Sun Sonata, “the world’s first solar painting,” on the sound façade of the Joseph and Margaret Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary. Following a design by the late Gene Davis, a seemingly ordinary solar wall is transformed into a highly innovative visual spectacle. The title Sun Sonata denotes both the rhythmic pattern of colors illuminated at night and the wall’s function as a solar energy collection system by day.
The genesis of this remarkable combination of aesthetics and function dates to the early 1980s when plans were being drawn for the Museum. Carlton Abbott, the Museum’s architect, suggested that the solar wall tubes could be colored, prompting the commission of Davis, an eminent painter of the Washington Color School, to transform the solar wall into a work of art. Davis was a natural choice for this commission, as the artist had achieved an international reputation for his abstract paintings which characteristically consisted of vertical bands of colors. The vertical solar tubes offered a linear aesthetic similar to that of the artists’ stripe paintings, while also providing an unusual and challenging artistic medium.
The large scale of the Museum’s solar wall, measuring sixty-five by thirteen feet, proved to be no obstacle to Davis, who had once created a work of art by painting a quarter of a mile of pavement in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The plan for the façade of the new Muscarelle Museum of Art involved the use of 124 reinforced fiberglass tubes, which were each to be filled with dyed water wand illuminated by fluorescent lights from behind. Davis experimented with a number of designs, which can be found in his notebook now in the Museum’s collection, before making his choice for the first configuration of colors. In accordance with the artist’s selected sequence, colored dye was systematically placed in the solar wall tubes and the dazzling display Sun Sonata came to life with the opening of the Museum in 1983. Since then, subsequent color arrangements have been derived from the original sketch book by Davis.
The artist’s arrangement of individual colors is often compared to the coordination of various notes in a piece of music. Davis’s chosen title of Sun Sonata for the solar wall further underscores the affinity seen between his compositions and those of composers of music. As Davis himself once explained, “My work is mainly about intervals, that is, like in music. Music is essentially time interval, and I’m interested in space interval.” The nature of Davis’s creative process is such that his works cannot be fully perceived or appreciated “in one glance,” and Sun Sonata stands as a vivid illustration of the artist’s words. Beyond its initial impact, a compelling energy entices the viewer to make a careful examination of the single notes of colors. Then, the multitude of the color juxtapositions makes clear Davis’s ability to take a simple and economical form – the colored stripe – and orchestrate it into a powerful visual symphony.
The passive solar heating system on the Muscarelle Museum of Art’s south façade is an example of a Trombe wall, named for the French designer Felix Trombe. This type of wall consists of a glass-fronted exterior masonry structure that absorbs solar energy for the distribution of heat into the building.
The Museum’s solar wall is oriented to within approximately ten degrees of true south so as to obtain maximum winter sunlight. Sunlight striking the Museum’s wall of glass warms the air between the glass and the water-filled tubes. Approximately eight inches behind the façade’s glass wall stand two vertically-stacked rows of tubes filled with dyed water, each tube measuring approximately six feet in height by one foot in diameter. The tubes serve as a heat storage medium in the solar system. As the warm air between glass and tubes rises, it passes into the building’s duct system through slots above the tubes. After passing through a filtering system which regulates temperature and humidity, the air is then distributed throughout the building via a system of ducts and vents. At the same time, cool air from the building is continuously recycled back into the solar wall air space through six vents along the floor.
During the winter, the solar wall is capable of providing ten to twenty percent of the heat for the 18,000 square-foot building. The solar wall absorbs heat about seventy percent of the day in the winter, but operates differently in the summer due to the angle of the sun. During the summer, a thirty-inch overhang above the solar wall blocks out direct summer nightlight while the warm air is vented out through the roof.
A concrete block wall, which separates the tubes from the exhibition space, helps store additional heat and radiates it back into the air space between the glass and tubes. Since the proper care of works of art necessitates the strict regulation of interior temperature and humidity, a layer of heavy insulation prevents heat from penetrating through the concrete block wall into the gallery. A narrow passageway exists between the wall and the water-filled tubes, allowing just enough room for maintenance of the solar tubes. The concrete wall also supports the fluorescent lights that illuminate the dye-colored tubes for each evening’s performance of Sun Sonata. |
