By Julie Harper ’01
Designer and artist Brian W. Brush shares details on the inspiration and installation of “Vitality,” the public art commissioned for the heart of UCF’s new Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion in Lake Nona.
Vitality (noun): the state of being strong and active; energy.
“We are all part of something greater and we share a collective energy that can be mobilized to serve and create for the greater good,” says Brian W. Brush, a designer and artist whose work, “Vitality,” will serve as the focal point in the two-story North lobby of the Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion — the heart of the new state-of-the-art facility in Lake Nona.
Through “Vitality,” Brush hopes to capture and convey the energy and spirit of nursing, and reflect it back to the UCF community, campus, and its patrons through a floating cloud of energetic light prisms.
The public art piece is among more than 130 artworks in the Art in State Building program on UCF’s campuses.
Brush, whose creative practice BRUSH is based in Montana, was recently in Florida for the installation in the Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion on UCF’s Academic Health Sciences Campus.
Over two weeks, Brush hung tens of thousands of feet of stainless-steel cable — that he had hand-measured and hand-cut in advance — to suspend 1,800 acrylic prisms with gold and blue to create the awe-inspiring piece of art.
Reflecting the Spirit of UCF Nursing
“Whether we know it or not, everyone has very close personal ties to nurses since we have all required some form of medical care that was made better and possible by the presence of nurses,” says Brush.
“But also, my mother-in-law is a nurse and so we understand quite well through her experiences the difficult and absolutely essential job they perform in healthcare,” he adds.
Brush, who is a two-time Public Art Network Year in Review Award winner, has been a public artist for more than 15 years. During that time, he has designed and constructed more than 20 works of public art across the U.S. and beyond primarily using his favorite medium — light.
“Light is at once formless yet gives definition to everything that possesses form,” he says. “Without light, nothing would be visible, nothing would exist.”
Through light, reflection and colors in “Vitality,” Brush magnifies the effects of many small, individual elements to produce a transformative whole that speaks to the remarkable potential of nurses to collectively impact a global community through individual acts of care and service.
By experiencing “Vitality” and the atmosphere it creates, Brush hopes students, faculty and visitors feel the impact of nurses and leave inspired.
Reflecting a Year of Design and Creating
The installation of “Vitality” marks the culmination of a year of work that began in July 2024 when Brush was selected as the finalist from a pool of 78 applicants to commission the public art as part of Florida’s Art in State Buildings program.
“I’ve worked in Florida before at other locations and I am always inspired by the liveliness of the landscape and culture in Florida that can inspire works of art,” says Brush.
For “Vitality,” the work materialized through a collaborative process.
“In addition to being a beautiful, uplifting and singular work of art, the piece was also designed to play an important role in the experience of the space of the new College of Nursing building,” explains Brush.
“It impacts how people move through and inhabit the lobby space of the building. A lot of thought was put into that very important potential of the art.”
Both Brush and the design team spent hundreds of hours designing and creating the piece.
The project team consisting of UCF, Hunton-Brady Architects, and DPR Construction worked hard to integrate the artwork support system within a complex, state-of-the-art building infrastructure system.
“I could not have done it without their hard work,” says Brush. “Artworks such as this require unique solutions for being installed in and physically integrated with the host building.”
While he had no previous personal ties to Florida, he says he will always have friends at UCF thanks to this project.
“Art is perhaps the greatest force for bringing people together in this world,” he says.
Bringing “Vitality” to the Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion (Video by Melanie Cedeño-López)
“Vitality” By the Numbers
12,000+
Linear feet of stainless-steel cable used to suspend all of the prisms. Hand measured and cut by Brush prior to installation.
1,800
Number of acrylic prisms
144
Hours spent installing on site over 14 days.
100s
Hours spent designing and creating
26′ x 10.5′ x 15′
Dimensions of final installation
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