DKLA Design: Art Sparks Conversation
In the Spring of 2024 the Summit County Public Art Advisory Board (‘SCPAAB’) selected Lisa Adler and Don Kennell of DKLA Design to create two large-scale public art sculptures. These artworks, a moose and a sandhill crane with chicks, will each stand approximately 25 feet high and be placed in the center of the two roundabouts at the Jeremy Ranch/Pinebrook exit. The roundabout project is SCPAAB’s largest public art project to date, and represents an exciting opportunity to bring more Arts & Culture to Summit County. “Visitors and residents come to Summit County for many different reasons,” state Don and Lisa. “When people are met with high-caliber public art they take notice. They may record that moment by taking a picture. By taking this small action people are creating a common experience. This common experience adds up to a moment of togetherness….It is these common experiences that bring a community together.”
Lisa and Don see their artworks as sparking conversations that can go in many different directions: “Our first task as artists is to cut through the noise in the general environment. We ask our viewers for one of their most valuable assets: their attention…Even if the viewers are all in separate cars driving past the sculpture, they are all part of a conversation that includes a 25 foot tall moose, for example. We believe that those conversations create opportunities for social engagement and for creating community.”
They may have been creating artwork together for many years, but Lisa and Don say it all started in 1995 with a Toyota Tercel: “We made our first art project together in 1995. It was an art car that we drove around the country. We got a small grant from a foundation in NYC called Art Matters and we used it to turn Lisa’s 1986 Toyota Tercel into a public art project. In that project we made a community out of strangers. We designed the car to be a representation of a map of the United States utilizing found objects along the way. We made a loop of the country. As the art car developed more people wanted to interact with it. In 1995 people didn’t have cameras in their pockets. We offered to take their picture with their favorite part of the map and sent out postcards to people all around the country. These people didn’t know each other but they still all shared something in common.” The artists feel that their current monumental sculpture work shares a common origin with the Toyota Tercel project, saying “what we do now with DKLA Design is still connected to the first art project we ever created. Our goal is to bring people together. Public art has that capacity to bring people together. Even people who aren’t physically together can share an experience when they experience a public art piece. Something at large scale becomes a physical thing in the real world that everyone in that place can see. One shared visual moment which has become less common in our fragmented world. Public art provides a visual reference for a particular time and place.”
From there, the duo continued to develop their creative voices in tandem, or as they like to think of it, in conversation. “Our artistic voices developed in conversation. In conversation with each other and with many other people and with the world around us. We make site-specific public art. Why do we do that? Because we believe space matters. The way humans feel in their bodies is affected by the quality of the space we move through. As artists who work in the public sphere, our goal is to create spaces that people want to move and be in. Our work draws an audience in to enhance the human experience of being in the world.”
Eventually this conversation led Don and Lisa to move to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2000, where they both taught at the college level for many years, often team teaching classes at the College of Santa Fe on the intersection of art and society. “We had endless conversations on the topic of visual language with our students. This is the language of line, shape and color. It’s not that we were teaching them a language. It’s that we were helping them listen to a language that was already inside of them. Everyone understands this language because it operates at a preverbal level. And how well we are using that language is key to how successful we are at cutting through the noise in order to initiate a conversation with the viewer.” One class project even involved a car, presumably as an homage to the Toyota Tercel that brought Lisa and Don together. “One of our favorite class projects was designing and transforming one of the College’s vans into a beautiful functional work of art.”
In 2015 Don and Lisa incorporated DKLA Design, which they founded “to make public art and bring nature into human consciousness…Every artist, in some way, is trying to represent their moment in history…Using animal imagery seeks to make a claim for the universal. People come to Summit County specifically to experience its natural environment. Nature is universal to life. We humans have a deep connection to animals and our work celebrates that. Summit County is a place where people and nature come together. The flora and fauna are very distinctive. People share this land with a diverse range of wild creatures. These creatures have deep roots in the spiritual and cultural life of the people of Utah. We see ourselves in this tradition of people witnessing animals and creating stories with the use of image and material.”
The artist duo are familiar with the distinct animals and features of Utah, having visited family in Summit County over the years and come to know many of the area’s Arts & Culture venues. “A real highlight is always the Kimball Art Center. Don actually participated in their “pART” show back in 2013, which was a show of work by artists using bicycle parts which was a fundraiser for World Bicycle Relief and the Park City community. The bike components were donated by SRAM, which Don sculpted into a bird.”
It seems synchronistic that more than a decade later, Lisa and Don will return to Summit County to install a much larger bird, also made out of metal, in the form of their nesting sandhill crane design. The materials they are using for this project, steel and galvanized sheet metal, has great meaning for the artists. “Don was born in Wyoming to a ranching family and grew up around these materials literally blowing in the wind. And he found them to be beautiful. When Don was an undergrad at the University of Houston he was inspired by the work of folk artists. What struck him most about folk artists was that their passion for materials was so powerful they were able to transform mundane materials into something sacred, mind blowing, and original.” Don’s inspiration carries through to the artwork he and Lisa co-create. “We sandwich unique cuts of galvanized sheet metal between two frames of plasma-cut steel to create shingles that are a remarkable sculpting material. These techniques allow us to define the muscle mass and body contours of each animal in a very dynamic way.”
Working with this incredible metal is rewarding, and reflects the effort and dedication that DKLA Design puts into every artwork. As Don and Lisa put it “We use our materials to tell stories. The stories have many layers and the way we use material demonstrates a deep caring. We put great effort into shaping materials. We apply heat, we apply pressure, we apply energy and we apply human imagination. These forces give life to this inert material. These forces shape this material into living creatures. And this tells the story of human beings who care. We transfer our energy into the material to share with our viewer the seriousness of the subject matter.”
Stay tuned for more updates about the Roundabout Project, which is scheduled to be installed in 2025. You can find more information about Don, Lisa, and DKLA Design on their website and Instagram.