Dan Corson

Dan Corson (born 1964) is an artist living in Hawaii and is a former member of the Seattle Arts Commission. He works in the field of public art, creating large-scale, concept-driven works installed in urban environments including in parks, railway stations, art galleries, meditation chambers, at intersections, under freeways, and on sidewalks. His approach is a mixture of sculpture, installation, theatrical design, architecture, and landscape design. Media include metal, glass, concrete, fiberglass, gravel, LEDs, lasers, neon, solar panels, radar detectors, photo-voltaic cells, infrared cameras, motors, searchlights, and occasionally elements such as fire, water, and smoke.

Some of Corson's works interact not with people, but with the environment. Examples include Nepenthes, whimsical fiberglass sculptures on sidewalks in Portland that are covered with photo-voltaic cells that glow at night, In 1994 the city of Seattle selected Corson to integrate art into the new Cedar River Watershed Education Center. In characteristic fashion he exploited the natural resources of the site–for example using falling water to create a musical artwork in the Rain Drum Courtyard.

His theatrical set and lighting designs have been featured at the ACT Theatre, Annex Theatre, and On the Boards in Seattle, at Young Vic in London, and at the San Diego Rep and the Old Globe in San Diego.

Life Corson was born in Glendale, California. He studied glass-blowing and neon fabrication at the Pilchuck Glass School in 1993, 1994, and 1996.

Corson has been together with his husband Berndt Stugger since 1997 and their Washington State Civil Union was converted into an official Marriage in 2014. Both Corson and Stugger are avid gardeners with a passion for tropical gardening. This botanical fascination can clearly be seen in Corson’s work. In 2010 they purchased some old sugarcane land in Hawaii Island and have transformed it into a small cacao farm.

Works

Corson has often collaborated in public art projects, for example working with fellow artists Norie Sato, Sheila Klein, and Tad Savinar on Seattle's Sound Transit Link Light Rail project in 1998. Corson is a prolific artist and it is not practical to list all of his creations; a selected list of works is shown below.

2002 Wave Rave Cave, Seattle 2003 Antennae Reeds, Seattle (with Norie Sato) 2005 Rain Drum Courtyard, North Bend, Washington 2007 Safety Spires, Seattle 2007 Emerald Laser Lawn, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 2007 Luminous Conjunctions, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 2008 Emerald Aura, Memphis, Tennessee 2009 The Root, Bellevue, Washington 2009 Grotesque Arabesque, Seattle 2009 Empyrean Passage, West Hollywood, California 2009 Oscillating Field, Seattle 2013 Nepenthes, Portland, Oregon 2013 Sonic Bloom, Seattle 2013 Rays, Council Bluffs, Iowa 2015 Shifting Topographies, Oakland, California 2015 Coherence, Des Moines, Iowa 2015 Nebulous, Seattle 2015 Sensing YOU and Sensing WATER, San Jose, California

Awards

1998 Artist Trust GAP award 2006 National AIA Housing Committee Award and AIA 2004 Seattle Honor Award 2007 PAN Year in Review Award for Emerald Laser Lawn 2009 PAN Year in Review Award for Empyrean Passage 2010 PAN Year in Review Award for Emerald Aura and Oscillating Field