Offshoot & Couplet

Offshoot and Couplet’s location, colors, poetry inscriptions, placement of objects and movement are by no means an accident. All of these aspects of the piece come together to communicate Bruch’s purpose and ideas for this sculpture; Tension between grammar and syntax. The communication facility is home to where a lot of hard work, thought, and learning takes place. This sculpture is a symbol of academic thought and promotes an active environment for creativity and productivity.

Offshoot and Couplet hangs on the wall of Western Washington University’s Communications building. The Sculpture is placed between big beautiful windows that open up onto south campus and stairs that have access to balconies on every floor of the facility allowing anyone at any level to see the sculpture. Initially, I thought of this sculpture setup to be like an aquarium, the sculpture being seaweed or a sea animal and the windows to be the tank we peer into. While this probably was not Cris Bruch’s original intent, it does say something important about the piece. While it is portraying the tension between syntax and grammar, there is a also lot left for the imagination.

About the Artist: Cris Bruch

Cris Bruch grew up in Kansas City and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture and ceramics at University of Wisconsin before moving to Seattle.

In the 1980’s Cris’s work was heavily influenced by social issues such as the imbalance and aggression in American consumer culture and its pervasive impact in homelessness and economic disparity. Today he does an array of things – including academic sculptures like Offshoot and Couplet.

Bruch has many works on display. One of his pieces is at the Frye Art Museum in an exhibition called Others Who Were Here which was inspired from when he started investigating his family’s history. The exhibition showed in Seattle from January 30th through March 27th 2016. Some of his work’s include Harrow, Pent, Wide Open, and Agra

Offshoot and Couplet started when Chris Bruch, the sculptor, found a metal ribbon wire outside of his studio in Seattle and decided to piece it together in a way so that it would make you think about tension and how it could relate to grammar and syntax. He decided to write with markers, poetry from multiple poets including himself- along the ribbon-like wire. We believe Bruch wanted to draw these connections between tension, grammar, and syntax so that the viewer could be academically inspired by this piece. Given its context, an academic building where many students are pass through, this makes sense!

Group Credits:

Bayley Maynard

Summer Sturges