33. Jacobs works explore human impulse, intimacy, and interaction through interventions with furniture, architecture, and open spaces. Over the course of her career, she has collaborated with engineers, circus performers, and people with disabilities to create breathing walls and ceilings, tightropes that cross through rooms, and chairs that embrace their sitters. Jacobs early works infuse inanimate objects and architectural elementsdoorways, columns, and ceilingswith human qualities that make them flex and breathe, giving them what Jacob describes as a somatic sensibility. In the site-specific installation Shunt, Robbin Locket Gallery (1991), a doorway between two rooms is reduced to a 3-inch wide opening. The surfaces on either side of the opening simultaneously breathe, opening and closing the gap. In another installation, Ceiling, Renaissance Society, Chicago, (1991), a ceiling swells and flattens in the even pace of a body at rest. The moving surfaces are integrated into architectural spaces so as to be almost invisible. To further engage her audiences, Jacob also has created a series of architectural decorations, such as plaster rosettes, that are unexpectedly warm. Their smooth white finishes are heated electrically and become darkened with the repeated touch of visitors. These rosettes are integrated into the structures where they are sited without visible evidence of the mechanics that power them. More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=49007#.UQWph3O4JLM[/url] Copyright © artdaily.org