​In the 337 Project House, you encountered this door at the end of a hallway, you also heard the clicking of a geiger counter, a device that detects the presence of radioactive material. You have to look into the window to see the installation of radioactive milk samples.

Radioiodine Closet portrays milk samples collected in the 1950's in rural parts of the United States to monitor how much radioactive iodine from the atmospheric nuclear testing was getting into the local cows milk. The Atomic Energy Commission wanted to determine how much radioactive iodine the human body could tolerate. It was a large scale experiment on public citizens.

​I painted the Jihadi Woman in the 25' hight stairwell of the 337 Project.

The 2007 Mogadishu, Somali conflict was occurring as we were working.

​There is no God, But God

CREATOR DESTROYER

Splitting the Plutonium Atom

Neon Installation

By Trent Alvey

          Mother Goddess Shakti, the Creator, sits at the center of the Universe. Kali, the destroyer, a manifestation of Shakti appears at the end of each tube. The tubes represent nuclear fuel rods used in the production of nuclear fuel. Ancient Hindu teachings explain that we live in a world of dichotomies and that to reach a state of Nirvana (Bliss) we must bring the opposites together. The Mother Goddess embodies this concept of great power being both good and evil. We are moving forward into the 21st century and seeing nuclear potential as the most magnanimous specter of good and evil that humankind will ever encounter.

         The words hand lettered in Sanskrit around center light quote Oppenheimer when he witnesses the first nuclear blast, Trinity, in 1945. The Sanskrit lettering is Oppenheimer’s quote of the Hindu Holy Book, Bhagavad Gita, which he is studying ... Now I have become Time, Destroyer of Worlds.

     I believe that he knew that this discovery would unleash both a holy trinity and an unholy force. The greater the good, the more horrible the evil: This is the supreme dichotomy: God or the Devil. Creation or Destruction, leaving the witnesses Terrified and Awestruck. Witnesses of the detonation of Trinity describe a false dawn rising over New Mexico, turning the desert sands into green glass. Testimony of down winders describes hell on earth: “I could see the bones in my arm with my eyes closed”.

      We are entering a new Atomic Age. More countries have nuclear capabilities now and more countries are seeking nuclear power. Some for domestic energy and others for weapons capability and some for both. At the heart of the issue is the splitting of the plutonium atom, either in a controlled way or in a destructive way. 

     Governments become seduced by the awe inspiring power — ultimate and intoxicating. Individual people and families are paying the debt with sixty years of illness genetic mutations and death that will continue forever in our progeny. 

​The projection of the first atomic detonation of Trinity, 1945. It took place in the White Sands Missile Range in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Projecting this explosion over an ordinary military cot, draped with fabric in the configuration of a cross, creates a memorial to those Atomic Soldiers who participated in all of the atmospheric testing of the 50's, 60's and 70's.

​Small rubber woman spins relentlessly on a stack of toast under the neon arc connecting twin toasters.

​Installed at Rio Grande Gallery, 2012. 

​Rio Grande Gallery, Salt Lake City, 2012

​Bells are suspended from 25' at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. This bell touches the pool of water. As the bell is struck the sound vibration travels into the water causing it to ripple and boil. 

​The two bells have microphones connected to them. As the vibration goes into a reverberation machine the sound creates experimental music.

Water Music was a part of Water Week in 2011.

The writing on the bells in in Hangul, Korean lettering. One bell says Everybody Loves Water, the other says Water Loves Everybody. This installation is based on the turn of the century science of Cymatics — the science of visualizing frequency

  ​

Synchronicity demonstrates an active phenomenon in the universe. This project tracks my exploration to the headwaters of five Salt Lake City Creeks, where I placed metronomes on the water. When starting the metronomes at different tempos, they will synchronize quickly as the beat frequency travels through water.

​The science of emergent phenomenon, that describes an underlying intelligence/pattern in diverse, complex, non-linear systems, describes the fractal pattern of rivers and creeks, forms the basis of this project. The intention of Synchronicity is to describe the that underlying pattern and synchronize it with our community’s consciousness.

A giant GPS map is an integral part of the installation for the Utah Arts Festival and The Leonardo in 2012 (art and science museum installation), showing the path of the creeks and where water goes underground in the city. Salt Lake Arts Festival 2012.

I painted 13 of the Fire Fly Fetishes for sale in the fundraising exhibit. I felt as though each fetish was packed with the energy of the children who worked on it. As I painted, I couldn't miss. I could flick and splash paint, even throw paint behind my back. It was absolutely effortless. I focused on the shadow cast by each fetish. I felt that the shadows told the rest of the story. While the fetishes look colorful, playful and animated, they also hold the pain and horrors that the children experienced in their young lives.

All 60 Fetish Dolls were sold along with some of my ink wash drawings at the exhibit. Over $5000 was raised to send to the children of Asayo's Wish Orphanage to purchase a years supply of food, mattresses, school uniforms, a pencil and school and testing fees.

The children's  art was breathtaking in its creativity. Art of the essential nature, uncomplicated by self-observing, simply emerges, almost instantaneously in a burst of fun, focus and innovation. I had just slipped into their world of creative innovation. They do it everyday as the need arises. For them innovation isn’t a concept. It is a necessity.

​Stainless steel fabrication with Italian neon following the contour of steel.

​This work was created with the mirror glass that I used to create Year of the Rabbit​

Sagebrush tied in ritualistic bundles sits on saffron and red rice. Exhibited at Rio Gallery 2012 in Salt Lake City.

​Exhibited at Rio Grande Gallery, Salt Lake City Utah 2012. 

Marine rope coils into a mandala, surrounded by calligraphy scrolls

Cruel Shoes are ​part of my installation Five Realities: Imprisoned by Form. Wearable, Size 9

The 15.5 foot tall bride’s dress hangs from a white washed tree branch, bringing it into a kind of ritual wedding dress for an oversized bride, an intimidating, unknown entity. It embodies our concept of a long-term commitment of marriage, but it is made from disposable materials. This bride comes from an untamed place. She has broken her ball and chain that keeps her in the traditional realms and vows to break all chains. She has become unpredictable and forceful, maybe even defiant, if she weren't so hilarious!

Uganda . . .Pouring out of a small fissure in Africa’s Rift Valley comes the molten liquid from the earth’s core —the raw material for human evolution. This essential material also carries the raw potential for good and evil, creation and destruction, the lightness and darkness in all of us. We are all formed from the same elements, the glowing, pulsing, cooling, substance of life. Sometimes the evil is so great and the good so pure, that we fail to see that the seed of one is in the heart of the other. In order to perceive this extreme paradox, we must simply immerse ourselves in the transformational light of the children.

Quilt Images:

Muammar al-Gaddafi (Libya, 1942-2011), Idi Amin Dada (Uganda, 1923-2003), Joseph Kony (Lord’s Resistance Army, Uganda 1961- ), Yoweri Museveni (President Uganda 1924- ), Robert Mugabe (President Zimbabwe 1924- ). 

Sound Installation at Parliament on World Religions