In the Press

Financed through the The San Diego Foundation’s Creative Catalyst Fund, the project is a year-long adventure whose aim it is to explore, ask questions about and imaginatively document—through interviews, collected stories, poetry, photos, drawings, and a variety of mediums—the relationships and connections between human beings and the structures that have figured prominently in their lives.

The project will culminate into physical structures, built from scratch, which will be architecturally and allegorically based on the gathered information and then installed on the Lux site. The installation will involve the construction of a small booth near Lux’s lower gravel lot and a second, larger building erected on a hilltop bluff overlooking the Artist Pavilion. The structures will debut with an opening reception on Thursday, October 25, 2012 and will remain on exhibit for visitors to view and explore through December 29, 2012 during Lux’s regular open hours.

While Structures Poetry Humans will ultimately highlight these finished, physical buildings, the project also has an online and virtual life. Via www.structurespoetryhumans.com, viewers can experience unique content created and posted every day of 2012 through photography, illustration, poetry, music, short films, and, as the opening date gets closer, blog updates. It is also through the website’s “Participate” page that Wes is inviting viewers to become collaborators by sending in physical, postmarked letters and sharing their own personal items, stories, anecdotes, memories, and thoughts about their own structures of influence—whether it be a home, room in a house, school, place of worship, workplace, crawlspace, etc. These letters and personal keepsakes will be used to create content for and influence the direction of the project.

“For Lux, this project represents an innovative opportunity to partner in a substantive way with a local, San Diego artist—something we normally don’t have the chance to do. Wes is incredible, so we’re thrilled to collaborate with him,” says Lux Director Reesey Shaw. “Plus, it lets us work on a project that is beyond our usual residency and art education programming, which is great because the interactive nature of Structures Human Poetry perfectly reflects Lux’s mission to engage visitors in the creative process.”

Wes Bruce grew up in Northern California and is a graduate of Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. He has been exhibited most recently at Atlas Gallery in Greeley, CO; the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego; the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, CA; and has worked as an art director and set designer for emerging bands and arts collaboratives including The Tree Ring, Sezio and Set & Drift. Structures Poetry Humans is his first partnership with Lux Art Institute.