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New Jersey Transit, in conjunction with the New Jersey Council on the Arts, has commissioned Alastair Noble, assistant professor of art, to lead a three-phase project involving art and architecture at a $30 million NJT train station and bus terminal in Wayne.
Noble is consulting on the facility’s design, creating the largest artwork in it, and making suggestions for complementary art based on his theme of light and speed. Work on the project began last year and is projected to finish in 2005.
The main structure of the station is a five-story parking garage. Noble has met frequently with NJT engineers and architects in Newark and Wayne while developing his plans. His design calls for the gaps between each garage floor, which measure about six by 30 feet, to feature stainless steel mesh illuminated with colored lights from coal cathode tubes.
“In daytime, it will look like stainless steel wrapping around the building, then in evening, color will wash over screens with different colored light,” he explains. “For the overall design of the train station and bus terminal – including the canopy for the passengers getting off the train and buses – I chose a curved, canopy form so everything throughout the station takes a flowing, fluid form that accentuates the notion of movement and speed.”
Sandra Furnbach ’03 (Matawan, N.J.), who received a B.S.degree in civil engineering last May and will earn a B.A. with majors in art and international studies this year, worked with Noble as an EXCEL Scholar to create his project proposal, which he presented to a selection committee and the mayor of Wayne. In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students assist faculty with research while earning a stipend. The program has helped make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate in EXCEL each year share their research through academic journal articles and conference presentations.
In a few weeks, Noble will present his proposal for the major artwork at the facility, a sculpture with two aluminum pieces measuring 15 feet wide and 36 feet high. The pieces would look like giant book pages, with the “text” cut out of the sculpture and coal cathode lighting shining through the spaces from behind. Noble has completed a 36-inch-high model of the sculpture, which would sit in the building’s front façade, bracketed on both sides of the central tower of the terminal. Furnbach played a major role in helping Noble use computer-aided design software to make drawings of the sculpture.
She also used a computer program called AutoCAD to design an entranceway for the 9th Street New Jersey Transit Light Rail station in Hoboken, N.J., and to create a web site to showcase Noble’s installations, sculpture, and public art. Designs for the entranceway have been cut from quarter-inch steel and will be installed in a few weeks.
In addition, Furnbach helped Noble install an outdoor sculpture, “Brooklyn Bridge 1925-Mayakovsky,” at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park under the Brooklyn Bridge in July. Reflecting various phases of the bridge’s construction, the piece was included in the 21st Annual Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Outdoor Sculpture Show.
Furnbach corresponded with Noble frequently last semester as she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, working on the latter portion of Lafayette’s distinctive program offering degrees in engineering and international studies.
“I came to Lafayette with an interest in international affairs and engineering, so the program has been a good fit for me,” says Furnbach, who fulfilled her art requirements last school year. “I enjoy math and engineering, but I am also interested in the artistic side of things, which is why I also completed a major in art.” Lafayette’s engineering and international studies program allows for a broader selection of courses than a typical engineering degree program, she adds.
Noble mentored psychology major Matthew O’Donnell ’05 (Brewster, Mass.) and computer science major Matthew Hokanson ’05 (Biddeford, Maine) last semester as they created log sculptures for the Breast Cancer Awareness Garden at Riverside Park in Easton. He is supervising art major Jessie Morgan ’05 (Amherst, Mass.) and economics and business major Mike Cohen ’04 (East Norwich, N.Y.) this semester as they design and create a bench or chair and a stone sculpture, respectively, for the garden.
Noble has led his Principles of Studio Art students in creating collographs — prints made from low-relief collages — that were displayed in downtown Easton at Quadrant Book Mart and at the Williams Center for the Arts.
A Fundamentals of Sculpture class taught by Noble created abstract plaster forms inspired by clay figures they based on live models; selections were displayed in a Skillman Library exhibit.
His interests include poetry, literature, and public and installation art. His art has been exhibited nationally and internationally for the past 25 years, including at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy. His works are part of many private, corporate, and public collections.
Noble is the organizer of several symposia and exhibitions on public art and poetry, contributes regularly as a reviewer for Sculpture magazine, and has published other articles, including a piece in Journal of Architecture.
Prior to joining Lafayette’s faculty, he was visiting professor of sculpture at Cornell University. He has also taught at Cedar Crest College and Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, N.J. He holds a master of fine arts degree from Rutgers University and a bachelor of arts from Hull College of Art, England.
Furnbach was on the Lafayette student team that took first place for its paper and earned honorable mention in its region of the 2003 National Concrete Canoe Competition. She also has been a member of the Lafayette Dancers, fund-raising officer for American Society of Civil Engineers, and choreographer for the Marquis Players, a student group that produces an annual musical to benefit charities.