Dear Selection Committee Members for the Docking State Office Building, Topeka, Kansas:
 

Greetings from Portland, Oregon, where I am based as a curator and art critic/contributor to ARTFORUM, ARTnews, Visual Art Source, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, and Salon.  I’m writing to enthusiastically recommend Martin Eichinger’s proposed project for your Docking State Office Building.
 

I have known Marty since 2004, when I reviewed one of his exhibitions at Lawrence Gallery in Portland for the city’s Pulitzer Prize-winning alternative newspaper, Willamette Week, where I was art critic for thirteen years.  I am also the author of the book From the Heart:  Sculpture by Martin Eichinger (Jorvik Press, 2022), a complete catalogue of his bronze sculptures in the vein of narrative romantic art.  In addition to a close reading of each sculpture, the book also includes a biographical overview of his life and an introduction to his work’s major themes.  My research for the book lasted many years, during which I conducted dozens of studio visits and in-depth interviews.  I think it’s accurate to say I know more about his artwork and ideas than anyone in the world except he himself.
 

One of the many things that impresses me about Marty is his remarkable fluency across a broad range of media.  While most renowned for his figurative bronze sculptures, he has in more recent years done groundbreaking work in abstract polymer sculptures, achieving sophisticated and unique effects in fine-art pieces as well as architectural applications, furniture design, and lighting.  The Amorphous Polymers resemble nebulae and other celestial bodies, reflecting his longstanding interest in space exploration—which I understand is a theme central to the project he’s proposing to your committee.
 

While researching my book I learned much about Marty’s earlier work creating exhibitions for science museums—among them the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) here in Portland, South Carolina State Museum (Columbia, SC) and Discovery Place (Charlotte, NC).  Many of those exhibits included interactive elements that activated the viewer’s participation, while others incorporated video, lasers, metal, plastics, fiber-optic cables, a large-scale gyroscope, and a mind-boggling array of other materials.  Marty has a remarkable ability to find the essence of diverse materials and processes and put them together in ways that evoke a sense of wonderment, curiosity, and uplift in viewers.
 

For four years he managed a team of artists and designers while creating his three-dimensional multi-projection artworks for the Portland Winter Light Festival, creating complex and hauntingly beautiful artworks, which were enjoyed by tens of thousands of festival-goers.  For these projects he coordinated a team of specialists in sound, video, animation, architecture, and electronics.  On an even larger scale, he conceived and executed two major mixed- and new-media installations at the world-famous Burning Man Art Festival in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada.  One project was an interactive sculpture; another was a 3,500-square-foot architectural space that served social and utilitarian purposes.  To helm such ambitious projectsand successfully build them to withstand harsh desert conditions and heavy use by tens of thousands of people, is a testament to Marty’s organizational and human-resources acumen, design expertise, and managerial finesse, above and beyond his brilliance as a visionary artist.
 

I am familiar with Marty’s work in polycarbonate- and steel-based installation, similar to what he is proposing to you, as I saw early mock-ups and installation photographs of his similar Nebulae Explosion at the 2024 Reno Tahoe International Art Show, as well as the original polymer sculptures upon which that piece was based.  In his current proposal, the symbolism he is incorporating—the power and nobility of the American Buffalo as Kansas’s state animal; and the links between what the Lakota people saw when they gazed up at the night sky and what the James Webb Space Telescope sees in that same sky—is consistent with his career-long melding of compelling symbolism, dramatic imagery, and technical mastery.
 

If you choose his design for the Docking State Office Building, I’m confident that everyone who enters that building will be wowed, inspired, and moved by Marty’s work.
 

In my book I place Marty in the lineage of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance, for he is truly a modern Renaissance Man:  a polymath who is comfortable wearing many hats at once.  He is a perfectionist, but he’s also practical; an idealist, but also a team player.  I interviewed many of his colleagues from all stages of his career, and they told me universally that his integrity and leadership inspire utmost confidence, trust, and esprit de corps.  I can vouch for that personally, having known him for two decades, first as a critic, later as a biographer and friend.
 

Martin Eichinger has my very highest recommendation for this project.  If you would like todiscuss further, I invite you to contact me through any of the methods listed below.
 

With my best regards,