Sandra Collins
The Challenge
The Spirit of a House
Longtime client Sandra Collins embarked on a major personal project to add custom design touches to her new house. This also entailed merging two lots into one park-like compound that features carefully considered landscape design welcoming to area wildlife. She enlisted GIRVIN to provide artistic direction to make this place her own.
The Solution
The Journey of a Symbol
Familiar with Sandra’s curatorial and artistic legacy, we began with an exploration in drawing metaphors for her work. Tim Girvin’s sketch of a dragon turned into the creation of a steel dragon sculpture—coordinating with Sandra’s builder, we found the perfect place for it: inlaid precisely in a sinuously draconic meander into the wood floor of her new home.
Environmental
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Over 40 years ago, when I met Tim Girvin, little did I dream that we would journey together through life collaborating on various projects. There were years when we did not keep in touch but whenever our paths did cross, projects were creative, challenging and rewarding.
For my recent and most personal project, Tim was asked to design signage for the grounds of my new house, stationery and an artistic piece to be inlaid into a winding area of white ash flooring. It was very important to me to make a statement of my personal direction at this point in my life. Discussing ideas with Tim and his team, we came up with signage that reflected my contemporary house and with stationery inspired by the surveys done of my 4-acre property. The image of a 5-clawed, 8-foot dragon cut into quarter inch stainless steel was selected for my artistic symbol and using different grinders, the details emerged into a most powerful, writhing piece of steel; the dragon was born and my house became my home.”