"Solar Ilumination I: The Evolution of Language" - Pearl Avenue Branch Library, San Jose, USA

With the opening of the Pearl Avenue Branch Library in San Jose, California, in August 2008, the City became the first municipality in the United States to install a permanent public art that combines photovoltaic (PV) cells and art glass in an architectural application. Artist Lynn Goodpasture collaborated with Peters Glass Studios, Portland, Oregon, and Paderborn, Germany, in the creation of four art glass windows, each 98" x 35", embedded with PV cells that in turn power a suspended glass LED-illuminated lamp. The artwork’s imagery explores the evolution of alphabets as the foundation of the written word. Each window contains characters in scripts that are the basis for written Latin, Russian, Vietnamese and numerous Indian languages. "We are all one" is engraved repeatedly in cuneiform on the lamp. As this installation explores cultural differences in the windows, the colour-changing lamp bridges those distinctions by celebrating what we share.

Goodpasture conceived "Solar Illumination I: Evolution of Language" to link the past with the future by exploring the first writings of humankind. The same time the art incorporates the newest applications of solar and LED technologies.

Artist: Lynn Goodpasture
Client: City of San Jose Public Art Program