"Floating World" was created by the Philadelphia artist, Ava Blitz, for the east corner of the "incubator building" of the University City Science Center in Philadelphia, which houses research and development facilities for emerging science and technology applications.

"The site-specific installations that I have been working on deal with an appreciation of the elements, the cycles of life, and the forces of growth, change, and evolution. I am interested in the mysterious similarity of structures, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, found in biology, botony, geology, and anthropology. My work alludes to the passage of time, petrified in stone or concrete. Lines become blurred and distinctions ambiguous between fossil and artifact, natural history and cultural history, and the past, present and future."

Fallow and Fecund

The installation is a "1% Public Art Commission", created under the auspices of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, and dedicated in 1998. It can be seen at 36th and Market Streets in West Philadelphia.

"Floating World began with a group of organic shapes, carved in stone. These shapes have been cast in colored concrete, hollowed out, and multiplied. Placed in different orientations, they appear in the multitude that encrusts, grows, climbs, or swims up the wall of the University City Science Center 'incubator' building ... My goal was to create colorful organic 'gargoyles' that would contrast with the planes, straight lines, and neutrality of the architecture and the city block."

Serendip has an earlier web exhibit, based on Ava's Seeds of Memory Sculpture Garden created in Japan in 1993. Ava Blitz can be reached by phone at 610 649-4872 or by email at avablitz@gmail.com. More information about her is available online.

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