CIVIC.SPACE

The public art of Marek Walczak & Wes Heiss

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SHADOWALK – construction

Derived from Indio’s history with date palms, this ¾ mile shade structure on Jackson St. joins the new CV Link to the new park. Local school children drew shadows of palms & we translated those drawings onto perforated shadow-casting panels. An undulating structure reflects the surrounding mountains.

The core of the design is a ‘Universal Connector‘. Only one connector is used for all the pavilions. The same node is used upside-down, turned 180 degrees, flipped, throughout the design.
At the open ends of the node we insert a cast colored glass ball.
Working with high school students in Indio from 3 different schools, we asked them to draw palm trees, palm leaves in black and white to be used on the shade-structure.
We created a website to drop off the images

Student drawings on the left, dot pattern cut out of panels on the right.

The drawings were turned into dot-patterns that were laser-cut from the panels.

A half-scale model of a canopy in our studio. You can also see laser-cut cardboard with the dot cutouts.

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A typical pavilion. The eccentric shape of the canopy follows the mountains in the distance.

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The various types and sizes of the pavilions.

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The disposition of the pavilions on Jackson St. which stretch on both sides of the street for 3/4 of a mile.

A prototype of the universal connector.

Construction of column system

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Back to Shadowalk >

Construction was completed in 2025

SHADOWALK was commissioned by the City of Indio Public Arts Commission, 2024-2025
Drawings by the students in the Desert Sands Unified School District.
Renderings by Civic Space, photos marked DP by David Potter

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