Surrounded in a world of pink, Ali Hval crafts jeweled pendants, rhinestones lined eyelashes and oversized charm bracelets with ceramics all at their cores drawing in the eye of a viewer to examine her work more closely.
Hval is an assistant professor of instruction of painting and drawing at the University of Iowa and has established herself in the public art realm across the Hawkeye state.
One of her most visible projects in Iowa City during the winter is the collection of neon colored lights wrapped around trees in the downtown pedestrian mall.
The project has grown a lot over the years. Hval worked with Betsy Potter, of the Iowa City Downtown District, to conceptualize the Scribble Trees in 2022, initially including six trees looped with colorful doodles.
Now, every one of the trees along the entire north side of the pedestrian mall on South Dubuque Street are covered in four different individually colored LED rope lights. The smaller trees get a pass on the four color rule, but still are adorned in beautiful ropes of light.
“It’s a very responsive way of working,” Hval said, “It’s almost like they have a memory of the year before.”
With the time in storage forming new curves in the rope lights and the growing trees from year to year each installation presents Hval with new challenges on how to scribble with the colorful LED lights.
“There’s no real logic behind them,” she said on the individual shapes, “They all have these different contours imbedded in them and I’m just listening to that.”
Hval uses a boom lift to navigate around the tree from top to bottom, evenly wrapping each tube to the contours of the tree, drawing with the light and using zip-ties to attach the light around branches.
The installation typically is on display brightening the shorter winter days between mid October and stays up through the end of February.
“Everything I do is very vibrant, and very pink.”
The color draws her interest for not only for its visual beauty but also wide range of symbolism it has held and changed throughout history.
“In some ways pink has been something that’s associated with weakness,” Hval said, “That’s something that I want to fight against because I think pink can be something that’s very powerful.”
Joseph Cress is the Digital Media Manager at Think Iowa City.
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