Photo CreditPhoto courtesy of McKay Lodge Fine Arts Conservation Laboratory, Inc.
Photo Caption(untitled - courtroom doors) - 6th floor conference room
(untitled - courtroom doors)
Artist
Fletcher Cox
Year2010
Classification
architectural arts
Medium
pecan wood and steel
Credits
Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
- Fletcher Cox used salvaged wood from naturally felled pecan trees to create 13 pairs of unique courtroom doors. He also designed the custom-made steel door-pulls, which were fabricated by Rick Craft. According to Cox, “starting with a tree is quite different from starting with a board; the wildness lives on in the wood.” He used raw-split wood to create the 24 square panels in each pair of courtroom doors. These raw panels are framed by longer, thinner members of smoothed lumber. The grain runs continuously across the interrupted sections of each framing member, giving the appearance of an interlocking lattice. The overall pattern of the doors recalls log-cabin quilts in which stair-stepped squares are built up around a central core. The rough panels are book-matched, so that the patterns in the stacked squares mirror each other. In contrast to the roughly textured outer surfaces of the doors, the inner courtroom sides present smooth planes, interrupted only by the expansion joints that surround each panel. Cox carefully planned all of these details to strike a subtle balance between the natural and man-made elements of his work.
