Team 3: Mike Mense / Sheila Wyne

MASQUE

We found ourselves most interested in that moment between before and after; that threshold moment when water is still a liquid but already a solid. We wonder if all the molecules look at each other and all decide at once to jump; or whether some jump and then some more. But how could there be a frozen molecule next to an unfrozen one? How can water coexist intimately with ice?

We think there is a look that happens before (or after) the leap that conveys this gap. We will create a moment on the Park Strip, a palpably frozen instant. Human heads of ice will suddenly freeze in place as you catch sight of them. We hope to keep our ice heads right there between water and ice, constantly close to 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and see what happens to that edge for two weeks in January in Anchorage Alaska.

Mike Mense

Mike Mense has practiced as mmenseArchitects since 1979. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Mense has been the architect for approximately 1000 projects in Alaska and the western United States, primarily residential work, although his practice has also included restaurants, museums, industrial facilities, broadcast facilities, tenant improvements, interiors, and planning and feasibility studies.

Sheila Wyne

Sheila Wyne has lived in Alaska since graduating from Wheaton College, Illinois. She has used the strengths of her community and the northern landscape to grow as an artist. Her work as a visual artist includes sculpture, public art commissions, set design, environmental design, and grass roots community art projects. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally. Since 1990 she has designed over a dozen public artworks. Wyne has been awarded a national NEA/TCG Fellowship in set design, a Rasmuson Artist Fellowship, a Boochever Fellowship and grants from the Alaska State Council on the Arts, and the Andy Warhol and Rockefeller Foundations.