Kate Raudenbush

Kate Raudenbush is a New York City-based sculpture artist known for her feminine yet fierce illuminated structures that blur the lines between sculpture and engineered architecture. Her large-scale allegorical artworks, crafted from laser-cut metals and structural steel, often serve as contemplative gathering spaces and landmarks that that explore themes of humanity’s evolving relationship with technology, nature, and our inner space.

Raudenbush’s works have been showcased internationally in cities, museums, botanical gardens, art fairs, and festivals. One of which was the iconoclastic Burning Man, where she got her start making sculpture 20 years ago. There she met client Neal Milch in the Nevada desert at one of his own sculpture works, the flaming Pachinko Machine. As he loved her lyrical and architectural style of sculpture, and they both loved a creative dare, they envisioned an artwork that had never been done before.

Inspired by the elemental ambitions of the fire art at Burning Man, Neal imagined making a metal sculpture that was integrated into his landscape, swimming pool and held a fire cloud ceiling to warm himself in a depths of winter by the sea. Kate, honoring the primary elements of water, fire and time, and studying countless images of wave forms from the Pacific ocean, imagined a dramatic wave curl, with the fire element surfing the underside of the crest. She tapped fellow artist Ryon Gesink from Oakland, CA (also a fellow Burner) to engineer and craft the fire cloud ceiling prototype.

*Working with these primary elements of water, fire and time inspired the artwork’s title to be sourced from the ancient Latin language: “Ignis Aqua” translated means “Fire Wave.” Neal and Kate had also greatly admired the drama of the woodcut series, 36 views of Mount Fuji created in the 1830’s by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, particularly “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” and Kate mused how a view of one wave could be seen from multiple view points, if frozen in time. After first hand-drawing each of her wave profiles and myriad cutwork patterns through old school pencil illustrations, Kate sliced the wave in individual sections and viewpoints in a digital 3D model, and stacked them vertically. The viewer sees the wave arranged as if in stop-motion: delineated through time and space; allegorically viewing the sculptural form as a quantum wave of Time, and the live fire cloud as a particle, living the present moment.

UAP collaborated with the client and artist to tame the complexity of this design into a rigorously engineered sculpture that can sustain hurricane winds. From laser-cut stainless steel sheets that form waves over a complex structural steel form, to an internal propane and venting system that supports live fire effects, this 12ft H x 21 ft w s 24ft L artwork is a symphony of many different logistic elements. Through collaboration with the 3D modeling team and many visits to the foundry, the artist and client were able to help our Rock Tavern artisans drive the project and synthesize the essential sculptural balance of robust engineering and aesthetic grace.

Client: Neal Milch, Sculpture Artist: Kate Raudenbush, Fire Artist: Ryon Gesink, Lighting Artist: Guy Smith, 3D modeling: Wing Lau, Rober Wrazen, Margaret Hewitt, Fabrication Lead: Mike List