Nicole Tucker

Nicole Tucker received her BA in Sculpture from Yale and her Master of Landscape Architecture from Harvard. In between she's worked as a short-order cook, graphic designer, slide conservationist and shopgirl at Marie LaVeau's House of Voodoo in New Orleans, just to name a few. Her work as both an artist and a landscape architect seeks to bring together such supposed opposites as art and science. Her contribution to Opolis does just that: it is a continuation of grant-funded work she did exploring the representation of landscape in comic books. She is currently a project architect at M. Paul Friedberg & Partners, LLC, and happy to be living in her native NYC again. Visit her website at www.gala.ws.

OPOLIS PARK

in comics, there are several ways to describe the landscape. one is the panoramic -- a single unbroken frame. the second is the paneled panoramic, where the single landscape is broken into multiple frames, so that holistically the panorama is seen, but a single portion of the image (perhaps a wagon) is seen to move accross the landscape from panel to panel, suggesting movement/time/etc. there is the broken landscape -- a series of momentary glimpese in panels of varying size, and there is the single moment shown multiple times to show the passage of time. this last convention is the one that i am using in Opolis Park (for which i hope ot possibly come up with a better name)

since Opolis is an imaginary city of indescriminate seasonality, Opolis Park is a single park slice that occurs in four seasons simultaneously. in the image you will see the simplest construction of that (though the actuality will be a bit more complex i think).

three stories unfold over the course of the park:

a couple meets in the park, dates in teh park, and breaks up in the park, all in different seasons.

another couple marrys in the park, and is seen later with the wife pregnant, and later with their child in the park

Out-of-Season Man is inspired by Hopi Tricksters: he is seen in the Winter portion of the park dressed in shorts and tee shirt attempting to fish. in SUmmer he is seen in a parka trying to make snow balls.

really, the narrative is the park itself: four season unfolding over a year, but now simultaneously.

various techniques are to be used: repetitive pruning and leaf collection to keep spring happening, judicious species selection to simulate fall, and the like.

in the included sketch, i'd like to point out the the sloped portion of the park faces the windows, while the "back" of the park is faced with building facades, that way, when you stand accross from the gallery, you'll just see the "trees" poking up from behind the buildings, beckoning you to walk towards it.