Hold it together

Perhaps as cool as seeing a large structure held together only by tension and a prayer: Watching the artist build it from scratch.

Jonathan Brilliant starts by using materials found in his natural habitat—the coffee shop—centering in on the wooden stir sticks. He arranges and weaves as many as 50,000 sticks into large sculptures that rely on tension and compression to stay standing.

For that reason, each piece is built within the exhibition space. And his next installation happens later this month at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum.

A partnership with the LASM, LSU Museum of Art and the Arts Council brings him here for this 10-day residency. Museum visitors can watch Brilliant working on the structure in the Soupcon Gallery upstairs during normal museum hours.

Brilliant is scheduled to work on the installation March 25 – April 2. lasm.org