Case Study: Cinder Bloom

Case Study: Cinder Bloom

par Lauren Herzak-Bauman dans Case Studies

Case Study: Cinder Bloom

Large-Scale Kinetic Ceramic Installation, MetroHealth Outpatient Health Center In collaboration with LAND Studio

 


 

Project Overview

Cinder Bloom is a kinetic ceramic wall installation commissioned for the first floor of MetroHealth's new Outpatient Health Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The project came through LAND Studio, a public art organization that has been a long-standing collaborator — our first project together was a commission for the Westin Hotel in downtown Cleveland. LAND is a genuine champion of artists: transparent, encouraging, and a model for how public art commissioning should work.

The finished piece spans six feet wide and includes 124 individual ceramic cylinders, four per spindle, each mounted on a rod and free to spin. The structure is fixed. Everything else moves.

The Challenge

Public art in a healthcare setting carries specific requirements. MetroHealth places art with intention — works must uphold the hospital's mission and actively uplift the people moving through its spaces. That shapes everything: color palette, subject matter, emotional register.

There are also practical constraints. As with most publicly installed work, the piece needed to sit no more than four inches off the wall and had to be fully sanitizable.

The conceptual work was finding a way to bring that much color and movement into a clinical space without it feeling forced. The piece needed to earn its presence.

The Process

The cylinders

For this project, I made a deliberate choice to work with premade refractory cylinders rather than hand-building each one. I sourced them through Columbus Clay, where they're sold as kiln posts — highly refractory objects originally manufactured for metal pouring and casting. They are perfectly uniform, which is exactly what this composition needed.

Working with existing objects also meant we could minimize the physical toll of repetitive fabrication on our bodies. That matters. Respecting how we work is a core value at Lauren HB Studio, and finding the right object rather than making 124 of them from scratch was the right call on every level.

From there, each cylinder was finished with slip and glaze. The palette includes ten colors, ranging from dark blues and teals up through magentas and yellows — a field of flowers in bloom, from the ground where they grow to the tops where they open.

Fabrication and assembly

The metal frame was fabricated by Rust Belt Fabrication, another longstanding studio relationship. Significant engineering went into the frame assembly: each spindle was custom cut to hold a clip that allows the cylinders to rotate freely, and each cylinder has washers attached that sit on those clips. The piece was assembled on site, frame first, then each spindle of four cylinders installed from there. The top of the frame locks into place to hold each spindle securely while still allowing rotation.

The Name and the Color Story

The title came from searching for language that held two things at once: high chroma and the idea of growth emerging after fire. "Cinder" keeps the piece grounded and tactile. "Bloom" provides that necessary pop of action.

My exploration of color for this project begins with MetroHealth's dedication to hope, health, and humanity, and where those values are consistently practiced in nature. I'm drawn to natural systems that recover not by returning to a previous state, but by adapting, reorganizing, and continuing forward.

Trees emerge after fire. Fungal networks beneath the soil redistribute nutrients where they're needed most. Erosion and repair happen at the same time. Nature does not reset, it responds.

The palette works this way too. Dark blues and teals anchor the lower register of the piece. Moving upward, the colors break open into magentas and warm yellows — a chromatic arc that mirrors a field coming into bloom. The composition reads from the ground up: rooted, then opening.

 

 

The Final Work

The piece spans six feet across the wall. 124 cylinders, four to a spindle, each one free to turn. Visitors move the bars. The composition belongs, in part, to whoever is standing in front of it. What the piece looks like at 9am is not what it looks like at 3pm.

This kinetic logic first appeared in Trichromic, an earlier studio work that established the core idea: a fixed grid structure with a color field that lives inside viewer participation. Cinder Bloom carries that logic forward into a new context, with a new palette built specifically for this space and this community.

Interested in a large-scale commission for your space? Start a conversation.

Tags: Commercial Commissions, Healthcare, Kinetic, Ceramic, Public Art, Cleveland

Mots clés: Commercial Commissions

Articles Similaires

Case Study: to/from

Case Study: to/from

Case Study: to/from Porcelain Wall Installation, Artifact NoDa In collaboration with ISG     Project Overview to/from is a site-specific porcelain wall installation commissioned for the mailroom of Artifact NoDa, a new luxury residential building in Charlotte, North Carolina. The project came through ISG, whose procurement team sources art thoughtfully for the residential interiors they design. The mailroom, where every resident passes through daily, was identified as a place where art belonged. Twenty-five handmade porcelain envelopes span a ten-foot wall above the mailboxes. Each one is modeled after a standard business envelope, cut from a slab and folded by hand. Each one is different. The Challenge The site itself shaped the work. Art in a mailroom, above actual mailboxes, in a building where people come and go quickly: how to bring the same reverence to that space as to any other. The other challenge was structural. Hanging ceramics cleanly on a wall is a problem I solve differently every time. For this installation, each envelope needed to float with no visible hardware. I cut two notches into the back of each piece: one for a bracket, one for a security t-screw. Then I mapped every envelope onto a template before install day so the placement would run smoothly on site. The Process Each envelope starts as a rolled slab of porcelain, cut to shape and folded in the same gesture you'd use with paper, but in clay, which means working quickly and reading the material as you go. The flap sits slightly open. The fold carries the memory of where pressure was applied. Each piece lands a little differently, which is the nature of working this way, and also the point. The material is unglazed porcelain, fired to cone 6. At that temperature, porcelain vitrifies on its own and doesn't need glaze to be durable. For sculpture, the raw clay body is often the right choice. The natural matte surface reads close in value to the textured wallcovering behind it, so the piece works primarily through shadow and dimension. Each one is the same size, but the handmade differences between them, in fold, in crease, in how the flap sits, give the composition life. This work connects to an earlier body of studio work, particularly the Stacks series. Bending porcelain like paper, and to look like paper, has been a sustained practice. Paper was an important material reference for a long time: a journalistic object, a place for reflection. Those earlier concepts don't always carry into a commercial space directly, but the objects often do. The work can speak to an audience in its own way, on its own terms.     The Final Work The twenty-five envelopes are all the same size and hung level, but the handmade variation between them, each fold landing a little differently, each flap opening at its own angle, makes the composition read as something looser than that. From across the room, the wall reads as movement. Up close, each piece is its own small object, with its own crease, its own particular fold. The title to/from names what envelopes do. It also names what the space does: a place of sending and receiving, of things passing through on their way somewhere else. Interested in a site-specific commission for your space? Start a conversation. Tags: Commercial Commissions, Residential, Porcelain, Site-Specific, Charlotte

Apprendre encore plus
Close-up of blue and teal wood and enamel panels forming abstract wall sculpture – Skyline on Stokes installation by Lauren HB Studio

Case Study: Skyline on Stokes

Case Study: Skyline on Stokes Luxury Residential Lobby, in collaboration with Christy Gray Art Consulting Project OverviewFor the Skyline on Stokes, a new luxury residential development, art consultant Christy Gray invited me to create a large-scale work for the building’s lobby. The vision for the project was clear: to bring modern, colorful activations into the shared spaces — art that could both complement the interiors and infuse them with life. The ChallengeSeveral constraints shaped the design. The lobby featured existing finishes — a wood paneling detail that ran halfway up the wall — which meant the artwork needed to “bump out” in specific places to align with the architecture. An existing painting had already been selected for the space, so my piece needed to complement without competing: standing in dialogue with the painting rather than clashing. And finally, the installation itself had to strike a balance — complex enough in concept to feel layered and engaging, but executed with enough technical clarity to install seamlessly. The ProcessI focused on introducing color in an abstract, formally driven way. After experimenting with multiple approaches, I landed on a composition built from wood and enamel. Enamel offered a rich, luminous finish, while wood provided grounding structure. Over 150 individual wood components were cut and hand-sanded — a small but intentional gesture that softened each plane, bringing a subtle warmth and tactility to what might otherwise feel flat or mechanical. This attention to touch transformed the overall rhythm of the work, allowing the handmade quality to reveal itself quietly through surface and edge. The Final WorkErrant Three (10' x 4' x 3.77") was installed in the lobby as a commanding but playful presence. Its abstract composition adds depth and movement to the stark modern interior, while its colors resonate with the nearby painting, creating harmony without mimicry. The piece feels integrated — belonging to the space yet activating it with new energy. The ImpactThe work has been warmly received, both by the design team and in early impressions from residents. For those living in the building, Errant Three adds personality and warmth to the public realm, shaping their everyday experience of coming and going. In its balance of form and feeling, the work embodies two of the studio’s guiding values: harmony — through its dialogue with architecture and neighboring art — and reverence — through its handmade presence and careful attention to detail.

Apprendre encore plus
Close-up of white rope and thread pattern forming abstract linear composition – Flight Paths installation by Lauren HB Studio

Case Study: Flight Paths

Project OverviewIn March 2024, Indie Walls commissioned me to create artwork for the new AC Marriott at National Landing, just outside Washington, D.C. With more than 300 guest rooms to outfit, the vision was to design a piece that would connect the hotel to its neighborhood and to nearby Reagan International Airport — reflecting the rhythms of flight in a way that felt both modern and meaningful. The ChallengeThis was a project defined by constraints. Each work needed to be 24 inches in diameter, produced within a tight budget, and completed on a compressed schedule. Glare was a concern in the hotel rooms, which meant finishes needed to diffuse light rather than reflect harshly. And beyond the technical, the challenge was conceptual: how to translate the complexity of air traffic into a form that guests would find beautiful, calming, and resonant. The ProcessThe design began with maps of actual flight paths in and out of Reagan International. To translate these lines into tactile form, we built each piece with wood backers and two different sizes of silver rope. Every rope was hand-laid according to a labeled map — a process that required patience, precision, and repetition. The method was meticulous: rope was first mapped backwards onto sticky paper, then adhered to the board, flipped, and finished with a resin coat to unify the surface. This sequence was repeated more than 350 times to complete the full commission. With the scale of production, I assembled a team of ten makers to help execute the vision, ensuring consistency while preserving the hand-placed quality of each element. The Final WorkThe finished series, Flight Paths, consists of over 300 individual works, each 24 inches in diameter. Muted greys and silvers echo the atmosphere of sky and metal, while the rope lines arc and intersect in patterns that mirror the elegant choreography of air traffic. The works are installed in every guest room of the AC Marriott, creating a quiet, site-specific connection to the airport just beyond the windows. The ImpactFlight Paths fits seamlessly into the hotel’s modern redesign, offering guests more than decoration: a subtle reminder of movement, travel, and arrival. For D.C.-area residents, the work resonates as a love letter to Reagan International — a hub both familiar and beloved. For me, the project embodies harmony in its balance of complexity and clarity, and reverence in the way it transforms data and infrastructure into human-centered art.

Apprendre encore plus

laissez un commentaire

Veuillez noter que les commentaires doivent être approuvés avant d'être publiés.