John David Mooney

John David Mooney Foundation

Abstract

Sun Dance: A Solar Garden         

This presentation will explain how an entrance sculpture for the historic utopian town of New Harmony, Indiana, became a 60-acre configuration of solar collectors which provides the town with its electricity. 

Because the photovoltaic panels address the sun, the entire installation becomes an interactive and monumental solar park. The 32’ high panels, each positioned at 45 degrees, are laid out to create a gigantic solar plan. People traversing the installation discover the solstices and the equinox paths, and by night LED lights on the panels define the day’s angle of the sun’s rise and setting. There is a central viewing area which is both a solar observatory and a traditional sculpture. The main state highway bisects this piece, and the entrance road to the town cuts through this solar installation. The scale is revealed to drivers approaching the town from the higher elevation of the adjacent hills.
An astronomically inspired 21st century solar collector sculpture takes a complete town off the grid.  Auxiliary energy sources will come from hydroelectric generators on the Wabash River bottom, and wind turbine generators on the Wabash River flood plain. Circles of mirrored monoliths make a solar gesture both as art and function.

Biographical Details

John David Mooney is an accomplished sculptor and environmental artist whose large-scale site-specific work has been commissioned for such clients as the U.S. State Department, the Australian Government, the Vatican Observatory, the British Foreign Office, the Maltese Government, IBM, and American Airlines. With the artist’s focus on creating public access to art, he has embraced multiple disciplines, such as astronomy, science, and plasma physics.  Recent works include Wild Rising Moon, which embodies the Ojibwe Indian culture in this 90-foot high piece. The Miami Wave, a 57,000 sq. foot paving piece at the Miami International Airport uses the sine wave as a prime design component, and the Urbana Light Sculpture to be installed this spring, completes the park design in Illinois which references the Indian mounds across this Midwest latitude, with a fountain sculpture in its centre. 
A book was published by the Vatican Observatory about the series of sculptures executed on the grounds, plus the sundial sculpture executed on the wall of the Observatory at Castel Gandolfo.  Selected museum collections include The Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mooney serves as artistic director of the John David Mooney Foundation, founded 1981.