Design Intent
The crystal Donor Art Glass Wall shows Baylor College of Medicine as an institution of research, care, service, and teaching. With all its elements, the Wall of Honor shows us a wonderful warm glimpse of Baylor as a caring "Family" within a world community. The Baylor Missions, with their tone of hope and broad scope, laid within the context of Baylor's History Timeline, the Baylor community of philanthropists, and the miraculous changing face of medicine, suggest a richly textured and fluid "tapestry" of design.

The philosophical tone of the installation expresses Baylor's 4-fold mission of education, research, patient care, and service, while demonstrating the connections and overlaps of the philanthropic community, and the lateral thinking fostered by Baylor throughout its history and science. The design invites revisiting to bring up core questions about our existence as humanity -- how did we on earth come to exist, from a soup of non life-form materials to actual life itself? How do we express the awesome quality of the human soul? A being that can look back at the past, imagine and create a future, that can, in the face of overwhelming adversity and even physical disease or encumbrance, still surmount and transcend?

Discovery, also artistic creation and even LIFE often emerges from what seems like a random and chaotic palette of information. It is from these mixes that the big "ahas" have often come. As the Baylor scientists explained, reams of data are being unraveled and published annually, however, the implications, usage's, and possibilities of these are still unknown and very exciting.

This fluid approach to art, without tight boundaries and severe geometry further expresses how, in the words of the development officers "the work is never finished"…. "This is just the beginning"…. "Baylor is pressing into the next era, and taking the lead" … toward something better."

The Baylor team and its generous supporters are aware that we are living a medical revolution. The contemporary and sensitively and richly detailed installation portrays the importance and seriousness of the work and gifts coming to Baylor.

The Baylor community, from administrator to researcher, expressed awe within the disciplined work that they do. There was excitement and "big-picture" awareness of the local and international interconnectivity of us all.

The design, with its overlaps of names, chronological history facts, values statements, compositional movement, and imagery, wants to show how one or more discoveries or meetings may trigger a chain reaction. That may finally lead to a key understanding, and eventually a cure to better the human condition. The science and research is infinitely intricate and beautiful within itself. Yet, how do we use it with care and serve humankind?

I hope the art will symbolically reveal the bridges between all the layered idea streams and celebrate the synergy between all disciplines. I would like the wall to celebrate the growth, continuity and collaborative energy needed to create successful outcomes.

COMPOSITIONAL ELEMENTS AND CONTENT
Included in the wall are many elements. We deep-carved and etched into the crystal donor names, a history time-line showing a chronology of major Baylor scientific and historic milestones, Title and appreciation statements, mission and values statement, and lyrical/poetical/scientific/inspirational quotes, artwork, and humanistic images.

Geometric Symbols
As an artist, I was very inspired by the aesthetically intriguing horizontal graph and chart presentations that the Genome Project researchers have developed to map the human Genome. These long complex river-like graphics of circles, squares, triangles, and the enzyme letter combinations A T C G are beautiful! and intriguing. They are a thought-provoking interpretation of Baylor's science and research identity and the very building blocks of Life itself.

The Dancer The entire design both starts and ends in an exquisite image of a human being.
This image and the geometric and measured compositional approach and carefully arranged graphics, plus the fluid organic and river-like lines, implies the ever-changing face of science, and the mysterious, even sacred, nature of life. Well-known photographer Lois Greenfield's exquisite dancer image was chosen by Amri Studio designers to express the beauty of the human form in all its wholeness and vitality. All the chromosomal bits and pieces running throughout the length of the design is the protein initials A C T G and river-like "tiling pathway" come together in this lovely figure, who, remarkably, resembles Michelangelo's Adam receiving the spark of life during Creation.

The Mosaic
The mystery and beauty of creation is further expressed with the main color element of the installation. A band of custom designed mosaic art by Los Angeles artist Eric Zammitt spans the wall as a sculptural and structural element. Thousands of laminated and carefully machined bits of colored acrylic form a dynamic flare of movement, color, and light in spectrum-like bars that are compositionally built on a fractal formula, and an expanded DNA spiral. These bands remarkably resemble some of the Research Laboratory computer-graphs that analyze chromosomal compositions.

The Lighting
The dramatic lighting is crucial here. It causes the art and graphics to glow and read 3-dimentionally. The luminosity is symbolic of research, learning, the sacred, and beginnings of life itself.

Advanced L.E.D. (light emitting diodes) are hidden in the mounting brackets to edge light the crystal carving. The crystal itself then becomes a continuous fiber optic.