This fall, our friend, our collaborator, and well-renowned visual artist, Chris Nitsche, has erected his impressive installation "Gestalt," an iconic refiguring of a ship's hull out of reclaimed wood. It will remain for the season at the Ships of the Sea Museum, a fitting location, but its visceral quality of the redesign of the hull over thousands of years of innovation creates what Gestalt psychology terms the "ground" on which the "figure" of any ship rests. Thus, his invocation of the summation of Gestalt's findings, that "the whole is greater than its parts," and in ship design, the hull would certainly be.

We were happy to supply some of our offcuts from sawing down structural timbers of reclaimed antique heart pine. All the wood was salvaged from buildings in and around historic and victorian districts of Savannah, and finds a sort life like that of the ship of Theseus.

As the "dog days," ruled by that wet star Sirius, were fabled of the ancients as perilous to sailors, pirates, and Sinbad, offered a stern providence against sailing in the summer, so the christening and launch of "Gestalt" at the onset of fall could not have been more timely.

Here are some pictures from the opening taken by our just retired, architecturally and design all-knowing, friend Chris Carr.

You can find process photos and more information on Nitsche's blog information about the artist himself at his website, and information about the installation itself here.