This is the thing they call life
Site-Specific Painting by artist Sarah Cain
OBM commissioned internationally acclaimed artist Sarah Cain to create a permanent outdoor public art installation for its Columbus, Ohio headquarters, at 250 North Harford Avenue. Cain’s monumental work of art is her largest site-specific painting to date and creates a vibrant new landmark in the Columbus skyline. The project completes OBM’s vision of creating a company home base that seamlessly merges art, media, and architecture.
Cain’s immersive painting envelops the building’s exterior from ground level to its 70ft tall central silos, transforming entrances, interior spaces, and adjacent outdoor walls with the artist’s trademark vivid colors and exuberant abstract shapes and lines.
To bring the artist’s vision to life, OBM engaged littleINDUSTRIES, a local art production company with experience installing large-scale paintings on buildings across Columbus. Owner Adam Brouillette and a team of local artists worked closely with Cain and OBM on the ambitious project. OBM employees also pitched in lending their hands in a company wide painting day.
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19
local artists
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80
days on site
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1400
production
team hours -
300
gallons of
paint -
300
colors
Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy of Sarah Cain
About the Artist
Sarah Cain
Known for her exuberant abstractions, Sarah Cain (b.1979) often extends her practice beyond the canvas into immersive architecture interventions, stained glass, intimate works on paper and furniture.
Cain’s muscular, gestural painting embraces a strategically intuitive power that both undermines and expands our expectations of what has been historically considered “serious” abstract painting. Her color-soaked palette often mixes with a wide range of found objects that in turn complement her titles, which range in reference from the sweet to the erotic, from the mystical to the political. Cain redefines abstraction in feminist terms as an architecture for transformative, embodied, emotive experience. Her work emphatically insists on the value of feminine, queer, and other “othered” aesthetics, intentionally subverting male-dominated art historical traditions.
Learn more about Sarah here.
Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy of Josh Miller
About the Production Artist
Adam Brouillette
For the last 20 years, Adam has worked as a professional artist. His paintings use flat, graphic lines and colors that are simultaneously familiar and unique to his style. His works have been featured widely in galleries, museums, publications, and exhibitions.
Adam has also expanded the use of his abilities to the commercial art and design world, where he is the owner of littleINDUSTRIES, a small company that does art consulting and strategy, production, and installation. He has worked with dozens of small business clients since the company started in 2006. Adam also works as a community organizer, putting together events and physical spaces designed to support the art community in which he is involved.
Learn more about Adam here.
Further Reading
With Big, Bold Art, Sarah Cain Redefines Seriousness in Painting – The New York Times
Review: Sarah Cain’s 1,000-square-foot painting is just the start – Los Angeles Times