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Swing Over by Alice Aycock
Photo CreditCarol M. Highsmith Photography
Swing Over
Photo CreditCarol M. Highsmith Photography

Swing Over

Artist
Year2004
Classification sculpture
Medium aluminum and steel
Dimensionsmaximum: 40 × 400 × 30 ft. (480 × 4799 3/4 × 360 in.)
Credits Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
Location

  • Traditionally, sculpture is composed of fixed, solid materials that are rooted to the ground. but Alice Aycock designed Swing Over “to deny gravity and escape the earth.” Composed of two triangular trusses and two curved forms, her sculpture loops across the façade of the George H. Fallon Federal Building, weaving in, out, and around the building’s entrance portico, culminating in a group of crossed, horn-like shapes at the composition’s center.


    Swing Over draws its inspiration from such diverse sources as the flight patterns of hummingbirds and the phenomenon known as the wormhole. The former can be seen in the way the trusses sweep up and then seem to pause before sliding down again, just as hummingbirds are able to pause in midair before continuing their progress. The wormhole concept is suggested by the central configuration consisting of double horns, each with a mouth at either end. According to theoretical physics, a wormhole offers a shortcut through space-time, much like a real worm that burrows through an apple rather than inching along its exterior.


    Sweeping the eye along the dynamic lines of the sculpture, the viewer may recall the exhilaration of riding in a roller coaster car as it climbs a steep incline, rounds a sharp curve, and then plunges down. This experience may be the closest most of us come to feeling free of gravity, and it’s one that Aycock recreates visually with Swing Over. In one of those delightful convergences of theory and practice, the company that fabricated this work also produces “sooperdooperloopers,” a particularly hair-raising amusement park ride.


    The dynamic quality of Swing Over is all the more breathtaking because it is affixed to a building that is a model of unremitting symmetry. In keeping with the Modernist aesthetic of the 1960s when it was built, the Fallon Building is all rectangles and straight lines. Aycock’s sculpture breaks through this geometry with a tracery of lyrical silver lines that glitter in the sunlight and cast whiplash shadows on the flat façade at night.