Columbus, OH – Thursday, September 28, 2023– National out-of-home media company Orange Barrel Media (OBM) unveils a permanent outdoor public art installation by internationally- acclaimed artist Sarah Cain. Specially commissioned by OBM for its Columbus, Ohio headquarters, Cain’s monumental work of art is the artist’s largest site-specific painting to date and establishes a vibrant new landmark in the Columbus skyline.
Titled This is the thing they call life, Cain’s immersive painting envelops the building’s exterior from ground level to its 70ft tall central silos, transforming entrances, interior spaces, and adjacent outdoor walls with the artist’s trademark vivid colors and exuberant abstract compositions. Challenging preconceived ideas of what serious art looks like, Cain’s gestural painting fluidly moves from bold geometrics to spray-painted scribbles, bordering on the absurd. Cain collaborated with a team of local artists, many residing in the neighborhood, to bring her ambitious installation to life.
The year-long project with Cain completes the vision of OBM CEO Pete Scantland, who began in 2013 redeveloping what at the time was an abandoned concrete manufacturing facility located on a brownfield site in the historically underinvested downtown-adjacent neighborhood of Franklinton. Over time, OBM assembled 17 acres of property and today, the site includes OBM’s offices, and an additional 400,000 square feet of office space anchored by CoverMyMeds. OBM
partnered with architect George Acock to reimagine the historic structure, preserving its natural concrete materiality and iconic silos, and modernizing the design with glass and steel. The AIA- award winning building opened in 2015, and the collaboration with Cain is the culmination of OBM’s work to create a company home base that seamlessly merges art, media, and architecture.
“We are thrilled to share Sarah’s inspiring and joyful painting with Columbus and our Franklinton neighbors”, says Scantland. “Working with artists to activate art in highly visible places is at the core of what we do here in Columbus and in cities throughout the US. Sarah’s transformative artwork is the perfect celebration of that ethos and our belief that art is a powerful form of expression that enriches lives.”
“Creating a painting of this magnitude has been a dream project and exciting challenge. The square footage is enormous, with so many unique surfaces and scale shifts, and an abundance of different viewpoints to consider,” shared Sarah Cain, “I’ve worked in Columbus many times throughout my career, and it is a poignant honor to have my work become part of this special landscape.”
Sarah Cain is known for her expansion of painting and long-term exploration of abstraction with her color-soaked palette that transform the individual experience into all-embracing poetry. Redefining abstraction in feminist terms as an architecture for transformative, embodied, emotive experience, her work draws from sources as disparate as Abstract Expressionism, graffiti, poetry, and music. This is the thing they call life was inspired by song lyrics from “The Dream” by the Oh Sees, which played as Cain worked on the sprawling piece.
Providing economic opportunities for the Columbus creative community was a priority for OBM and Cain throughout the project. They engaged local artist and community organizer Adam Brouillette and his company, littleINDUSTRIES, to produce the large-scale painting. Adam’s team of local artists and Columbus College of Art & Design alums worked closely with Cain and Corey Favor, OBM’s Sr. Director of Community Engagement, who led the initiative. The immense effort utilized nearly 300 gallons of paint in more than 300 different colors, and the production team worked over 1,400 hours onsite over a period of four months to complete the artwork.
OBM welcomes public visitors to its campus to view the artwork. Located along the Scioto River and the Greenway bike path, the building’s varied surfaces and shapes provide multiple viewing experiences for visitors whether traveling by car, bike, or on foot. The installation also greets visitors entering the city along I-670E, which sees over 81 million travelers annually and 222,000 daily.
The collaboration with Sarah Cain reflects OBM’s ongoing commitment to expand the reach of public art to broader and more diverse audiences. OBM regularly partners with museums and cultural institutions, as well as local and internationally recognized artists. In the last year, OBM developed more than 100 artist projects reaching an audience of more than 500,000,000 across OBM’s nationwide portfolio of digital and static media installations in cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and many others. Past artist collaborators include Nick Cave, Genevieve Gaignard, Jeffrey Gibson, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Charles McGee, Catherine Opie, Pipilotti Rist, Cauleen Smith, Hank Willis Thomas, Nari Ward, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many others.
LOCATION
Orange Barrel Media’s headquarters is located at 250 North Hartford Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43222.
