Paul Gregg Studio

Sun Bounce & Solar Seats

Sun Bounce is a permanent sculpture for St. Kevin's Community College, in Dunlavin, Co. Wicklow. It comprises six circular mirrors mounted on an upturned stainless steel dial (sextant) that relfect the sun onto a target that is in the shade. (All text by Adrian Duncan)

There are six mirrors on the Sun Bounce sculpture, one for each monthly gradation of the sun and earth's relational movements — ebb and flow.

At noon, on the first of each month, the sun's light, whether it likes it or not, is interrupted on its path to the earth where it, reflected from the surface of a mirror, suddenly finds itself illuminating a target fixed to the wall of the school.

The target is a graphic based upon the wall design on a church called Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy. In the mid-1500s a Fr. Ignazio Danti conducted his own astronomical experiments on this public church wall.

Around this arrangement are benches for the students to sit on, with seat materials that heat up and cool down at differing rates, glass, timber, copper, steel, etc. — like embers flung out in lonely orbit around the enormous yolk of an indifferent fire.

Solar Seat (Timber)

Solar Seat (Black Granite)

Solar Seat (Glass & Mirror)

Solar Seat (Copper)