Studio visit x Joseph O'Connell
Vedica Art Studios and Gallery
11 days left
Joseph O’Connell’s studio - Creative Machines creates interactive art that fuses light, motion, and human connection. With over 200 projects, including record-breaking sculptures, the studio integrates advanced materials and technologies into landscapes and architecture. Known for accessible yet profound works, the studio Creative Machines transforms environments into engaging spaces. Visit to witness how art inspires connection and dialogue.
"Joseph O’Connell’s interactive installations take us on a metaphysical journey through spatial and sensory awareness"
Welcome to Creative Machines, an art studio founded by Joseph O’Connell in 1995 in Tucson, Arizona. This studio creates sculptures of extraordinary scale, from several meters to the world’s largest acrylic and kinetic installations including Chasing the Stars, Maverick Spirit, Heart Beacon, Multiple Selves and Color Wash. Each work reflects a commitment to blending interactivity, light, motion and human connection.
The studio’s hallmark is interactivity. Sculptures respond to touch, movement and light, creating moments of shared exploration. By integrating science and technology with thoughtful design, O'Connell's studio bridges art and emotion, engaging viewers in dynamic and transformative ways.
With projects gracing plazas, campuses, and public spaces worldwide, Joseph's studio transforms landscapes into sites of inspiration. Here, light dances, materials innovate and human connection takes center stage. Explore a studio where art meets motion and sparks engagement.
Who is Joseph O'Connell?
Joseph O’Connell’s interactive installations take us on a metaphysical journey through spatial and sensory awareness. With over 30 years of experimentation and dedication to breaking boundaries in his sculptural and large scale installation practice, Joseph is a gifted artist and storyteller known for incorporating light, colour and motion into his work.
Joseph O'Connell in his studio Creative Machines, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Subject matter, concept, inspiration and theme
O’Connell has crafted in a wide range of materials and meta-materials, masterfully capturing a cornucopia of themes. Inspired by history, science and communications, his work provides a grounding consciousness. His non-hierarchical narratives include equality, collaboration, acceptance and community through celebration and remembrance. Many of his works offer experiences that capture the collective identity of a community while others allow for unique personal engagement.
Maverick Spirit
Multiple Selves
O’Connell’s more recent work ‘Multiple Selves’, conveys the same message in an elevated form of interaction. The inner structure is now the person, who must enter into the artwork. Clear glass spheres of varying sizes have been fused together in a form that resembles a diving helmet, suspended from the ceiling. The heavy sculpture has an ethereal weightless quality about it, floating like a mask out of soap bubbles, that completely covers one’s head and neck when ‘worn’.
Joseph O'Connell, Multiple Selves, 2023. Glass spheres - L22.5” x W17” x H21”
Entering the installation and looking out through the glass, is an experience of redefining our body in space. A small upside-down image of the surroundings is refracted in each of the spheres, creating a kaleidoscope. The fractal visual distortion allows the flow of perception to accept the oneness we feel as being a result of many individual moments. From the outside, our singular self is also ‘divided’, appearing upside-down on the surface of each sphere.
Maverick Spirit - Work in Progress, Creative Machines, Tucson, Arizona, USA
The public space
An installation artist contends with shaping space, which O’Connell takes as a challenge and a privilege. This has established him as a force in site-specific public works, that interact with the social fabric of a community. Beyond the highly-controlled gallery settings, his installations are framed by the larger forces we encounter in the natural world, such as light, sound and motion. His unique approach to elevating pure forms of collective experiences into monuments is what sets him apart.
Joseph O'Connell, Cocoon, 2014. Stainless steel, LED lighting - 168 × 504 in
The new project - Chromanova
Whether in his accurate solar and stellar Observatory, his seasonal sun-dial Chromanova or his commemoration of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, a collaboration with Anneliese Bruner to be installed soon. When a community adopts one of his installations as their own, its influence transforms the air around it and the outdoors into an infinite museum. This immersion creates dialogue, changing the interaction with the work and assigning it a rich collective identity.
Chromanova, 2023 - L22" x W23" x H22" 21" Diameter 4th most recent prototype
The hidden messages
Some of O’Connell’s installations, like the award-wining 2021 Chasing the Stars, need pulling, pushing or some other physical motion to interact with, which creates a more memorable experience registered both by the mind and the body. In Boston, we can encounter the installation, Find Joy. Disjointed sets of pipes climb and snake over the site, that secretly have a specific vantage point one must reach to read the message. When in alignment, they spell out Joy and two concentric hearts.
Chasing the Stars, 2021. Stainless steel, Koda XT, LED lighting, mirrors - 312 × 66 × 384 in
Interactive methodology
Additionally to light and motion with tools such as gesture sensors, programmed algorithms and video manipulation, O’Connell goes beyond the eyes and combines sound with art. Central to his focus is the effect on the area around the installations, including the viewer who through their interaction becomes part of the sculpture, sharing the same space for a moment. In this way he is dedicated to creating work that enhances positive experiences for children.
Joseph O'Connell with his team building Chasing the Stars
Endlessly experimental in new techniques, like monumental 3d printing, O’Connell contends that we don’t take play seriously enough, stating “Play is when we open ourselves up and meaning can come in”. By choosing diffused light patterns and color mixing, he moves us away from the tech feeling and connects us anew to the natural world. Being individuals who are also part of a central core, a universal timeless identity.
Synchrony, 2023. 3D printed carbon fiber, dichroic acrylic, ball bearings L22" x W22" x H24"
