Westmoreland museum's 'Windframe' one of a kind

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The 14-foot-high art piece affixed to the west wing of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg always is changing.

“Windframe,” a kinetic sculpture created by Connecticut artist Tim Prentice, was commissioned as part of the museum’s 2013 renovation project and installed two years later. It has become a focal part of the Greensburg landscape.

“It’s the best thing we did with the renovation,” said Barbara Jones, the museum’s retiring chief curator.

The sculpture’s 460 individual polished stainless steel petals attached to guide wires let “Windframe” adjust to current lighting conditions and allows it to shift its design based with the breeze, giving onlookers different views depending on the time of day, weather conditions and reflections of the surrounding environment.

Prentice, the 91-year-old artist who created “Windframe” said its meaning is entirely up to those who view the piece.

“I don’t think it’s deeply meaningful. It reflects back to an individual, and its color it kicks back from the environment,” Prentice said.

The Westmoreland Society, the museum’s donor organization that since 1986 has purchased new art for the facility, commissioned the sculpture after reviewing three proposals as part of the renovation project. Prentice’s “Windframe” beat out proposals from artists who pitched a lighting sculpture and another that included steel work for the inside atrium portion of the museum.

“It was fairly unanimous that they picked ‘Windframe.’ It’s a custom piece for the west wing, and I think it’s the only thing like it in town,” Jones said.

“It’s never static and never stays the same. It’s like it’s alive.”

Prentice and a partner spent two days in Greensburg in 2015 assembling the sculpture. Its individual post-card size parts were fashioned separately at a Connecticut machine shop based on Prentice’s design, he said.

And it originally was slated for a different location at the Greensburg site as officials initially planned to place the museum’s name in the spot where “Windframe” now resides.

“It was a terrible idea,” Prentice said of the initial plan.

The museum hosted Prentice and his works during a 2017 exhibition called “The Art of Movement.”

Prentice grew up in New York and worked as an architect until he shifted careers at age 43 to embrace his love of kinetic art. Prentice has fashioned pieces that appear on buildings and in museums worldwide, including different versions of the “Windframe.”

One 32-foot tall piece is in Switzerland and another is at the Connecticut home of actor Sam Waterston, he said.

Each “Windframe” piece is a different size. The Greensburg version that faces south down North Main Street stands 14-by-7 feet.

“I’ve made quite a few of them based on this design over the last 15 years. There are no two that are alike,” Prentice said.