Impact: Woven Together
DATE | 2023
LOCATION | Portsmouth, NH
MEDIUM | Metal, Paint
DIMENSIONS | 15ft x 31ft x 7ft
Impact is part of my site responsive concept "Woven Together" for the Brick Market development in downtown Portsmouth NH. The work transforms massive sheets of plate steel into an unexpectedly graceful, sweeping gesture, formed in the visual language of draped fabric through its folds, curves, and almost improbable softness. It is a delicious contradiction: a very heavy material behaving as though it might float in the wind blowing off the Atlantic in this iconic coastal city. The form carries a deliberately performed femininity that uses elegance, exaggeration, and seduction. Steel is dressed up in shimmering automotive paint and physical mass is made to perform lightness. In this sense, Impact treats femininity not as a fixed category but as an act: something constructed, performed, and delightfully capable of disrupting expectations. Its highly reflective automotive paint surface catches the bodies and movement of people passing through the courtyard, folding their reflections into the work, making looking an experience of being seen. The sculpture becomes part mirror, part monument, part flirtation with the viewer. Reflection becomes a form of encounter. Beer’s work is deeply concerned with bodies—how we see ourselves, how we are seen, how we occupy space, and how objects can participate in those experiences. Impact does more than occupy a courtyard; it helps establish a sense of place while creating a moment in which the viewer encounters both the sculpture and themselves.
McNabb Properties and Woodburn &Company landscape design reached out for a design concept. We then worked together for a design www.mcnabbgroup.com www.woodburnandcompany.com