A Project of the Tucson Pima Arts Council

The Optus
by Rae Douglass
Sponsor: Arizona Daily Star
Nonprofit: Voices: Community Stories Past & Present, Inc

A cactus transformed into a shimmering apparition to be as vivid in the day as the night. Posing in the desert landscape its form looks at once familiar, but energized with the power of light, it becomes a cheerful and welcoming accent. My proposal takes the traditional desert form of an adolescent saguaro whose ribs are made out of steel rods that are woven with metal strips laminated with a diffraction film. The film is laminated to the inside portion of the strips or "skin" of the Optus. The strips will be tied to the ribs at each weave with steel wire twisted to resemble cactus needles. The film is oriented to produce a color effect that I discovered a few years ago that appears to emanate from the hollow center of the Optus body. The display in direct sunlight is very vibrant, and gives an elegant color distribution along the length of the Optus. At night the Optus will glow and sparkle from a concealed spotlight at the base. I have included a maquette of the Optus. Please take it outside on a sunny day, and view it from the same side as the sun. You will notice that the colors change and sparkle as you move around the Optus. The ribs will fan out from the base in the traditional form, and will be secured to a base buried in the ground, or to the fiberglass boulder provided by TPAC and Tucson Electric. The light source will be recessed in the base and shine upwards to illuminate the body of the Optus.

The sculpture is completely weatherproof, and will be as visible and vibrant in the day as the night. The sculpture is 6' - 8' tall and would be most striking if it could be placed amongst other cactus in a natural setting, to give it the opportunity to take people off-guard. Since it will be solar powered, it is advisable that the site be quite dark at night, and has little or no ambient light that could compete with the solar light source.

One of the major assets of Tucson is the unusual beauty of the region, the flora and fauna coupled with the clear and abundant light and its interplay with the desert. The luminaria is a tradition not unique to Tucson, so it is vital that it be made out of a form unique to our environment to create an experience that visitors will remember us by.