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"Floating World" was created by the Philadelphia artist, Ava Blitz, for the east corner of
the "incubator building" of the University City Science Center in Philadelphia, which houses research
and development facilities for emerging science and technology applications.
"The site-specific installations that I have been working on deal with an appreciation of the
elements, the cycles of life, and the forces of growth, change, and evolution. I am interested in
the mysterious similarity of structures, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, found in biology,
botony, geology, and anthropology. My work alludes to the passage of time, petrified in stone or
concrete. Lines become blurred and distinctions ambiguous between fossil and artifact, natural history
and cultural history, and the past, present and future."
Fallow and Fecund
The installation is a "1% Public Art Commission", created under the auspices of the Philadelphia
Redevelopment Authority, and dedicated in 1998. It can be seen at 36th and Market Streets in West
Philadelphia.
"Floating World began with a group of organic shapes, carved in stone. These shapes have been cast
in colored concrete, hollowed out, and multiplied. Placed in different orientations, they appear in
the multitude that encrusts, grows, climbs, or swims up the wall of the University City Science Center
'incubator' building ... My goal was to create colorful organic 'gargoyles' that would contrast with
the planes, straight lines, and neutrality of the architecture and the city block."
Serendip has an earlier web exhibit, based on Ava's
Seeds of Memory Sculpture Garden
created in Japan in 1993. Ava Blitz can be reached by phone at 610 649-4872 or by email at
avablitz@gmail.com. More information about her is
available online.
Photographs by Ava Blitz and Greg Benson. Exhibit layout by Ava Blitz, Paul Grobstein, and Jan Richard
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