The Projective Eye Gallery at UNC Charlotte Center City opens “Pulse Dome Project: Art & Design of Don ZanFagna” on Friday, Jan. 9, with a reception, lecture and performance. Organized by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, S.C., the “Pulse Dome Project” presents paintings, drawings, sketchbooks and 3D models that explicate the futuristic and metaphoric concept of “growing” one’s own house.
An artist, architect and designer, ZanFagna imagined a home created, constructed and maintained by all-organic processes and in perfect harmony with nature. From roughly 1971 through 1995, he researched world indigenous structures, insect architecture, wombs and such natural forms as caves, tunnels and volcanoes to learn what had been done already and what was still likely to be accomplished by others in relation to sustainable human architecture. At the same time, he was deeply influenced by the writings and activities of Buckminster Fuller and was particularly captivated by Fuller’s geodesic dome. Provocative and poetic, the “Pulse Dome Project” remains as a visually and conceptually fascinating testament to one man’s attempt to address one of humanity’s most vexing problems—sustainable shelter.
At the Jan. 9 opening, exhibition curator Mark Sloan, director of the Halsey Institute for Contemporary Art, will speak at 7 p.m. about ZanFagna’s work and vision. Cellist Tanja Bechtler and pianist Dylan Savage, associate professor of music, will then give a short performance of music with connections to the artist’s philosophy and work, composed by Astor Piazzolla, Olivier Messiaen, Hildegard von Bingen, J.S. Bach and Arnold Schoenberg.