The paths that link Claremont McKenna’s (CMC) Mid Quad dorms converge at Pae White’s “Qwalala” – a meandering wall of colorful Murano glass bricks, first unveiled in Sept. 2023. At 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 6, students, alumni and Claremont residents alike gathered under dark skies for “An Evening with Pae White,” a special reception of Qwalala, one of CMC’s public art pieces.
The glass that makes up Qwalala seems to entrap organic, smoke-like forms that come alive when the underfoot lighting glows after dark. The white bricks toward the bottom of the structure give way to bright, vibrant colors, giving the illusion that the sculpture is floating.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the simple module of a brick, the basic brick,” White said. “But to introduce this idea of a storm — this is like the module of a storm, this kind of chaos — is used in this really practical way. And this instability is happening, but it’s contained. So to have this kind of module of energy as something you make architecture with, is something I was really interested in.”
White spoke about her journey in the art world through subjects and mediums. She has explored many dimensions of artmaking, from clockmaking to textiles.
A Pasadena native, White seemed comfortable at CMC’s Athenaeum — she received a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and Art History from Scripps College in 1985. After receiving her MFA from ArtCenter College of Design, she studied sculpture at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. Her work is featured in Oslo’s opera house and the Berlin Airport — she has even been asked to design the seat-pattern for Los Angeles’s Metro bus lines.
Her personal whims and interests are reflected in her work: She has a reputation of exploiting seemingly mundane subjects, like popcorn and crabs, within unconventional mediums. White separates her work in two categories: large scale public projects and more intimate, studio collaborations with fabricators at art centers around the world. Qwalala toes the line between the two.
In 2017, White was invited to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore off San Marco, Venice, where she had the liberty to create anything she wanted. Inspired by the Venetian tradition of Murano glass work, she decided to create “Qwalala.”
“You can see the footprint [in San Giorgio Maggiore] is the same footprint in Claremont,” White said.
She drew inspiration from the pale greens, blues and yellows of the Roman glass palette.
“I had also gone to a museum and seen some Roman antiquities out of glass. I was very interested in [the Roman glass] palette. So I kind of made this selection, from this palette, from this exhibition I had seen, and then we just started developing this piece.”
White sought to create an organic, flowing feeling. During the design process, she became worried that the viewer could only experience “Qwalala” from afar, and may feel confined due to the fact that one could only walk around it, not through it.
“I didn’t want the viewer to be trapped in this very long piece, so I knew I wanted to make doorways, but all the solutions coming up were very expensive,” White said. “I ended up visiting a friend in the Yucatan, and we went to some Mayan ruins, and there was this very beautiful simple doorway that we adapted to this piece.”
By walking through the “doorway” of the piece, one interacts with the work as White intended.
“To have this kind of module of energy as something you make architecture with, is something I was really interested in.”
“{Qwalala] is vibrant and fun to look at,” Parie Kumar CM ’28 said. “When I’m walking back to Benson [Residence Hall], cutting through the sculpture makes me happy.”
This feeling of soft transition along with the piece’s color palette reminded White of the changing of seasons, which is why she originally called the piece “Pomona” to invoke images of the namesake goddess of the harvest. “Pomona” just so happened to be a vulgar piece of Venetian slang, so White had to fight to call the piece “Pomona.”
When CMC acquired the piece, White agreed to change its name from “Pomona” to “Qwalala.” The name refers to a river on the Northern coast of California. White thought that the soft consonants of the word mimicked the rolling form of the sculpture. It also did well to ease Claremont McKenna’s reluctance at installing an art piece named after Pomona College.
“What I really liked in the quad [at CMC] is that when I was playing around with the footprint, there were two pathways coming from the dorms that intersected in the perfect place for these doorways,” White said.
The doorways got a lot of use the night of White’s talk. Carrying plates of cheese and crackers, viewers walked the length of White’s glowing installation, pondering the materials and meaning. Viewers buzzed with energy, entranced with the architecture and all its smoky details.
“It’s very refreshing to look outside my window when I’m doing homework and see the sculpture,” one Mid Quad resident, Martina Bernheim CM ’28, said. “I think it really adds to the vibes of the school and it’s interesting to see.”
At night, Qwalala takes on a dreamlike blur.
“[In Venice] the piece wasn’t open at night, and we never had the budget to do lights, so it was always kind of a fantasy,” White confessed. “So come here and see this is beyond my dreams.”
Facebook Comments