Jaxoscope Art Installation

The Jaxoscope, an illuminated interactive sculpture created by Buffalo artist, Shasti O’Leary-Soudant, is a striking addition to the city of Jacksonville, Florida, located at the Jesse Smith Memorial Plaza. The project was made possible by Florida’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) and Jacksonville’s Downtown Investment Authority (DIA), whose Urban Art Program includes painted murals, bike racks and sculptures.

O’Leary-Soudant approached Tom Schunk, Project Manager at Rigidized, with a paper model of her design. A prototype was then created of one outer shell to determine best practices.

“The cantilevered design was my biggest concern because of the stress it creates,” Schunk explained. “So much so that we originally planned to assemble the sculpture in Florida. It was built in Buffalo, however, because we needed our equipment and the resources to create it.” When the time to ship the sculpture came, a special 8’ x 8’ base was built for transportation to Florida, where a crane was used to lower it onto the concrete foundation, while still protected by packaging.

A honeycomb textured stainless steel pattern, 6HC, was chosen for the project. A powder-coated colored enamel was applied, through a baked on process. A UV clear coat was applied after to protect the color.

Rigidized used a fiber laser system to cut the holes for the 10,000 lights, and that process proved immensely challenging. Installing the lights themselves required extraordinary patience. “The pieces are held together with bolts and plates. It wasn’t possible to use a drill in some cases due to the shape, so I had to climb into the sculpture to construct it,” Schunk added.

Read the full case study here.