Client: Marlana Adele Vassar

Overview

Marlana Vassar is an African American artist and designer whose work has been featured in the Carnegie Museum of Art among other locations. A Pittsburgh area artist and University of Pittsburgh alum (2006), Marlana is largely self-taught as an artist and her philosophy of balancing style and substance has attracted a diverse audience to her work. The first of Marlana’s works in bronze, this sculpture required 103 artisan labor hours to produce at Bollinger Atelier.

Goals

The goal Marlana and Bollinger had was to represent and honor diversity of black and brown people in East Liberty and to expand on Marlana's vision on something more surreal like how we are related to creatures, plants and the environment around us; how we got here and our connection to the world.

Process

Marlana was chosen to be part of a project called Art and Parks throughout Pittsburgh. Highland Park is one of Pittsburgh’s historic parks so we considered the history and legacy, what’s already there and what’s not going to work. Within Highland Park is a sizeable collection of Giuseppe Moretti statues and statues focusing on the greatness of man with a high vantage point. Marlana wanted to show greatness through care and humility, respect and accessibility.

Marlana sculpted an original in clay and the clay original was 3d scanned to produce a digital 3d model. The digital 3d model was scaled to the final size for bronze casting and was 3d printed using a PMMA material provided by form.xyz in Portland Oregon and designed specifically for investment and ceramic shell casting. ⁠

"Flora" is located near the entrance of Highland Park, Pennsylvania.⁠