National Aquarium

I was commissioned by the National Aquarium to create another participatory installation for Artscape 2016. Artscape is the largest free arts festival in the United States, located in Baltimore, Maryland.

The medium is always the message when working with the aquarium, and this year’s theme was Space: Explore what’s out there. I fabricated two installations for our space: a smack of jellies, as well as a mural.

Inside a bell, a ring of LEDs and its battery pack lighting the jugs from the centre

The smack of jellies represented a new species of bioluminescent jellyfish that had recently been discovered in the Mediterranean Sea. The mural depicted the transformation of a vampire squid, a deep sea creature that lives where sunlight never penetrates.

The group lit from within at dusk, glowing yellow above the crowd

With help from the Ohio Valley Discovery Museum, I was able to build twelve jelly bells, and from those bells participants were encouraged to add tentacles using recycled plastic bags. Festival goers also had the opportunity to help paint the ‘paint by number’ mural.

Kasey Jones lying back in a deep pile of empty gallon jugs, grinning up at the camera

A finished bell on the museum floor, a dome built from hundreds of gallon jugs, a chalkboard sign for the Ohio Valley Museum of Discovery beside it

Kasey Jones outdoors holding a finished bell above her head, the dome of jugs hiding her face

Looking straight up into the underside of a bell, packed with the necks of gallon jugs

Festival goers and Baltimore police officers helping tie plastic bag tentacles onto a bell

The installations drew in over 10,000 people, with more than 2,000 people participating in the creation of the work.

Hand-drawn site plan of the installation, three tents around a central pole with cable lines running out to them and the jellies hung along the cables, trees and the mural marked around the edges Concept sketch of the layout.