Roger Cummings

Chief Cultural Producer

Cred

Loeb Fellow // Harvard University, 2009
Started at JXTA in 1995

Contact

roger.cummings@juxtaposition.org

Roger Cummings activates relationships between space and place through art, design, independent livelihood, and collective social enterprise. Cummings’ work acknowledges, while at the same time, progresses the direction of urban visual expression. He aims to create works of art in public and private spaces that have personal and impersonal uses, in the hopes of enlivening meaningful, human interactions.

 

Urban architecture, design, and planning inform his work. In close examination of these influences, his work has taken the form of large-scale sculptures, pocket parks, and functional enhancements to public space. The functionality of Cummings’ work aims to incite in urban citizens’ a lens through which they are able to see themselves included, represented, and civically engaged in establishing the visual identities of their neighborhood. In placing his work at the center of a critical dialogue, where art becomes a vehicle through which cooperative models of community engagement encourage social interactions in public space, his choice of materials has evolved. He has explored new ways of mixing an accessible medium like aerosol paint with steel, stone, recyclable found objects, and photo voltaic. He has also experimented with using tiles and fabric to extrude and create three-dimensional multi-media biomorphic structures that reference Hip Hop, urban design, and sustainability.