The Winslow Arts Trust (WAT) Museum located at the La Posada Hotel in Winslow recently added a new sculpture for the public to enjoy. The sculpture is called “Parallax” created by New Mexican artist Mark Knutson. Knutson describes Parallax as, “‘Similar to the rail lines of a railroad track that fade into the horizon, the sculpture forms a parallax that vertically disappears in the blue skies above. The pieces come apart and fragment just like the changing grid lines that direct the path of the train at a busy intersection.” He went on to remark that, almost just as important as the physical form of the sculpture is the context in which it is presented. The WAT Museum is located in an addition that was built onto the train yard at the La Posada Hotel and is physically only feet away from the rail line that goes through Winslow. Parallax is part of a bigger series of work done by Knutson and his company, the Kason Group, called “Subterfuge”.
Subterfuge is defined as “deceit used to achieve one’s goals,” and Knutson plays with this theme in this series by displaying a hard architectural material and using bright color and sculpture to deceive the viewer. The combination of architecture and sculpture is the cornerstone of his brand. For his undergraduate degree Knutson studied architecture in design at the University of Illinois and afterwards went to the Cranbrook Academy of Art and received a Master’s Degree in sculpture.
Everything he works on has elements of both these aspects, whether it is an architectural feat like designing a staircase or a public sculpture like Parallax, he has been able to combine those ideas into something beyond what would come from focusing on either form or function.
This is not the first project the New Mexican artist has made for the La Posada Hotel. Twenty-two years ago, Knutson was approached by owners Alan Affeldt and Tina Mion to recreate the wrought iron jackrabbit tables the hotel used to bolster in its heyday. All of those tables are made by Knutson in his workshop in Edgewood, N.M., and he says he has made more than 100 of these tables for the hotel over the more than two decades he’s been making them.
Knutson understands that the iconography of the American Southwest is forever linked to the railroad expansion of the 19th century, and from that history was also born many of the cities in the area including Winslow, making it the best place to house such a fascinating collaboration of architecture and design.
