New installation at Rice Gallery is a solar-powered mobile artist’s studio

‘Emergency Response Studio’
New installation at Rice Gallery is a solar-powered mobile artist’s studio

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Artist Paul Villinski’s “Emergency Response Studio,” a solar-powered, mobile artist’s studio, will be on view Jan. 29 through March 1 at Rice University Art Gallery. The mobile studio is Villinski’s innovative response to the conditions he found in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans during a visit to the Lower Ninth Ward in 2006.

	Courtesy of Jonathan Ferrara Gallery
	Artist Paul Villinski’s “Emergency Response Studio,” a solar-powered, mobile artist’s studio, will be on view Jan. 29 through March 1 at Rice University Art Gallery.

Over seven months, Villinski transformed a salvaged FEMA-style trailer into a rolling, off-the-grid living/work space that could house displaced artists or allow visiting artists to “embed” in post-disaster settings.

“I believe we ought to consider deploying artists as part of the mix of disaster workers, medical personnel, nongovernmental organizations, architects and urban planners — those people charged with responding to, repairing and re-envisioning disaster sites like New Orleans,” Villinski said.

For the installation at Rice, which will be on the plaza in front of Sewall Hall, Villinski gutted and rebuilt a 30-foot Gulfstream Cavalier trailer that was virtually identical to the 50,000 trailers built for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and used in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The process took about six months.

Reborn as the “Emergency Response Studio,” the trailer’s formaldehyde-ridden original materials have been replaced by entirely ”green” technology and building materials, including recycled denim insulation, bamboo cabinetry, compact fluorescent lighting, reclaimed wood and natural linoleum floor tiles made from linseed oil. It is powered by eight large batteries that store energy generated by an array of solar panels and a micro-wind turbine atop a 40-foot-high mast.

The “Emergency Response Studio” is equipped with an expansive work area featuring a wall section that lowers to become a deck. A 10-foot, elliptical geodesic skylight allows extra headroom and natural lighting in the work area. Though designed as an artist’s studio and residence, “Emergency Response Studio” is a prototype for self-sufficient, solar-powered mobile housing.

The mobile studio is the second in an ongoing series of architectural installations at Rice Gallery. The first was “Bamboo Roof” in 2002 by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. Villinski’s project will be accompanied by a piece in the gallery that details the construction process and features further information about movable housing.
 
Villinski’s work has been exhibited extensively, most recently in two major exhibitions: “Prospect.1 New Orleans” (2008) and “Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary,” the inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, on view through Feb. 15. His work will be also be included in “Cutters,” opening at the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, N.J., in February. Villinski lives and works in New York City and was born in York, Maine. He received his bachelor’s degree with honors from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York.