Tres Birds P.E.A.R.L is an interactive art installation that was inspired by the Sheboygan community’s experiences with wild animals as well as the spatial connection between the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the Mead Public Library, and the Art Preserve of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. The art piece is located in the City Green, between the Mead Library and the Arts Center, seen as a communal space where art, music and literature merge.

In Fall 2017, Tres Birds architect and artist Michael Moore visited Sheboygan and met with community members. With the help of the Connecting Communities department of the John Michael Kohler Center, He posed one question to participants: What experience have you had with a wild animals in Sheboygan County? The question was meant to make contributors think about their current city situation—a fast-growing and diverse place—as well as the presence of animals in the Arts Center’s collection, and the naturally-preserved areas around the county where animals reside. One of these safe spaces is the location of the ART Preserve which has been designed by tres birds with the support of the John Michel Kohler Arts Center. In and around the new building, many natural and organic shapes can be found including forms that recall moraines. In fact, the Art Preserve is built emerging from a landform. The multilevel terrain in the installation is made with dirt from the Art Preserve site, the dirt pulled from the landscape to allow the Art Preserve to be sited within the hillside. Tres Birds P.E.A.R.L is a space that can be physically accessed by the visitor.

The community conversations led to the architect exploring the intimate moment that happens between a person and a wild animal when they see each other for the first time. For many participants, it seemed that the moment of awareness that those animals exist and coexist with was magical. Those moments were clearly important for the people in the conversations and for Michael Moore who immediately recognized that a focus, a source or a main point of the piece, was needed.

The interactive sculpture has a main point, a source that emits and reflects light thorough dichroic glass. This structure is nestled within three “moraines”. It is like a point of beginning and end in which the animals that are around the colorful piece are journeying towards the orb will reveal what is already present but could not be seen. The seemingly ‘white’ light of the sun is a rainbow of color.  As living beings approach and perhaps enter the orb, they are met with refracted and overlapping elements of the essence of both light and water; that which we are all connected to and that which makes all beings common to one another. The transmitted light of the interior and the exterior refracted light of the orb will always be in flux; the daily / seasonal position of the sun, the movement of the observer, the humidity of the air.  It is the subtleness of these changes that create a phenomenal experience.

Located on Sheboygan’s City Green, 7th St. & New York Ave. Sheboygan WI. Across from Mead Public Library.