About MJ Dowling
Artist Statement
My work explores innovation through participation, motion, and the breaking of traditional artistic boundaries. As an interactive artist, I create three-dimensional wall sculptures that transform viewing into an evolving experience. Each piece is composed of independently mounted, freely rotating panels that respond to the viewer’s touch or movement. Instead of a fixed composition, the artwork becomes a shifting constellation of color, form, and alignment—continuously reconfigured in real time.
With every rotation, new patterns emerge, dissolve, and reassemble, ensuring no two encounters are ever the same. The viewer becomes an essential collaborator, shaping the visual outcome and entering a personal dialogue with the work. This participatory structure challenges conventional ideas of authorship, embracing fluidity, impermanence, and the beauty of chance.
Engaging and intuitive, the artwork invites both adults and children to explore, play, and discover their own visual pathways. It dissolves the boundary between artist and audience, object and experience, offering a living artwork defined by motion, transformation, and human engagement.
The Process
Each sculpture begins with an idea for transformation—an image, word, or composition that can become something entirely different through rotation. The design process may unfold over days or months as I explore how multiple visual states can coexist within the same set of independently rotating panels. Once the concept is resolved, fabrication and painting typically require an additional two to four weeks. Each panel is individually constructed, painted and finished, while the mounting system is engineered to allow the artwork to rotate freely and transform through the viewer’s touch. My architectural background informs both the precision of the fabrication and the problem-solving required to make multiple compositions work within a single sculpture. The result is not one fixed image, but an artwork designed to continually change through participation.
Biography
Growing up in the Adirondacks, MJ was inspired by both her mother’s love for painting and her father’s passion for construction. Given these influences, she was naturally drawn to the study of both art and architecture and subsequently pursued a Bachelor of Architecture degree at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While at CMU, MJ also minored in Art and took numerous classes in drawing, painting, and sculpture.
Upon graduating, she was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Air Force and began a twenty-year journey serving her country as a Registered Architect. During this time, she developed a passion for exploring different cultures and unique art forms. Following her military service, MJ worked as an architect in private practice in New York before moving to Florida and resuming her focus on creating art.
MJ splits her time between the coastal community of Sewall’s Point, Florida, and the Adirondack Mountain hamlet of Brantingham Lake, New York.
Art with a Purpose