MARVEL

A veritable generator of worlds, Randy Polumbo combines his wide-ranging study of horticulture, engineering, and regenerative design to create impressive interactive environments. Touting the use of hand-finished, homegrown, beaded mycelium (mushroom) panels; hand blown glass flowers with hand-silvered pistils and stamens; and a variety of applications for reflective highway glass marker beads, Polumbo’s installations feel like stepping onto another planet. And rightfully so: some feature silver-stepped hills in a fully-chromed room you can walk and lounge on; mesmerizing and hypnotic hand-blown glass and custom electronics and lighting; a lighthouse transformed into a psychedelic artist’s haven. Each installation explores a theme, a color, and a concept, from an space-age airstream trailer kaleidoscope to a neo-New Age ketamine resort, if the overwhelming visual experience doesn’t make you say “Woah!” then the ideas behind them certainly will. Polumbo’s projects center the formal and elemental aspects of a site such as light, water, and earth to draw our attention to geological time—that is, processes beyond the scale of human perception. The works reveal their own chronology, framing the simultaneity of growth, endurance, and impending collapse.