about

w/ returns with its second exhibition that honors five years of collaboration between designer Jonathan Nesci and Noblitt Fabricating. As a formative example of the inspiration for the w/ platform—born from the legacy of production across Nesci’s career and the importance of those who have enabled the realization of his practice—the partnership between Nesci and Noblitt includes more than twenty projects. It began in 2014 with the production of 100 Variations, a site-specific installation at Eliel and Eero Saarinen’s First Christian Church (1942) in Columbus, just a few blocks from the current w/ gallery. Composed of 100 unique, mirror-polished aluminum tables following a parametric grid, the work references the original reflecting pool and the Saarinen’s commitment to the golden ratio—or divine proportion, represented mathematically as 1:1.618. The collaboration continued in 2015 with the Present Perimeter System—a tangram-inspired body of work utilizing the components of one hexagon, three half hexagons, three rhombuses, and three triangles, and includes mirrors, vases, and tables executed in powder-coated steel. Through the 2017 exhibition Avenue of the Architects, designed by Nesci, fabricated by Noblitt, and presented at I.M. Pei’s Cleo Memorial Library (1969) in conjunction with Exhibit Columbus, a display armature featured seminal photographs of the architecture of Columbus’s formidable Fifth Street taken between 1969 and 2017. In 2018 the partnership realized a series of Lady Bird Stools for Lincoln Elementary School in Columbus. A nod to the school’s architect, Latvian-born US architect and educator Gunnar Birkerts (1930–2017), the concrete stools also recognize First Lady Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson, who inaugurated the school in 1967. 2018 also garnered an international opportunity with the launch of the Community Bench, a skatable 22-foot octagonal form made of steel, aluminum, and MDF, that was unveiled at Milan Design Week. Cumulatively, this exhibition celebrates the half-decade of creative partnership between Nesci and Noblitt by presenting representative work from many of the production series in addition to introducing the 618 Planter, a new milled aluminum piece that utilizes the golden ratio within its proportional design.

noblitt fabricating

Noblitt Fabricating is an International Organization for Standardization (ISO)-certified metal fabrication shop based in Columbus, Indiana that was founded by George Noblitt in 1965. Noblitt serves primarily as a prototyping and small-batch production shop for regional automotive suppliers including Cummins, the global power leader in diesel and alternative fuel engines that supported the transformation of Columbus into a bastion of modernist architecture and contemporary art. Noblitt has historically supported artistic efforts in Columbus, chiefly it made significant contributions to metal fabricated elements of Swiss artist Jean Tinguely’s Chaos 1 (1974), a seven-ton, 30-foot tall kinetic sculpture, commissioned by Cummins chairman J. Irwin Miller and installed in the Cesar Pelli-designed Commons. It is the largest Tinguely piece in the US. In 2010, Curt and Michelle Aton purchased Noblitt Fabricating and continued the tradition of supporting the arts with the fabrication and installation of 100 Variations by Jonathan Nesci, the pilot installation for what became Exhibit Columbus.