“Alchemy Works” is a multiple-element public art project for Hill Hall at The Colorado School of Mines. This collaboration between artists Carolyn Braaksma and David Griggs was developed to reveal the culture and lore of the Metallurgy Department while revealing its roots in the ancient field of alchemy.

The work starts with the Alchemist’s Window, which illuminates the building’s atrium space just as the work of alchemist’s illuminated scientific ideas of the time. The window is an abstraction of a diagram from medieval alchemy. It begins as a diagram of opposites that represent layers of meaning. Reading from the outside in, the Medieval Latin (Terra, Aer, Ignis, Aqua) translates into “earth”, “air”, “fire”, and “water”. The next layer (Corpus, Anima, Spiritus) is interpreted as “body”, “soul” and “spirit”. The combination of these quintessential elements (“essent-quint”) forms the essential matter that was believed to be the life force contained in the element of gold. Light coming in from the Alchemist’s Window flows over metal column capitals and down crystalline-shaped concrete columns. The room’s terrazzo floor design includes many metallurgical references, including pearlite, mica crystals, phase diagrams, and brass symbols representing elements from alchemy. The floor design also echoes the shapes of the shadows cast by the Alchemist’s Window.

Included in the terrazzo floor is a depiction of a fracture plane that continues outside on the plaza as a line of quartzite. The shape of the plaza, along with its color and scoring, were also part of the public art design. The exterior of the building is further defined by architectural details designed by the artists. These include precast concrete elements around windows, doors, and the building’s cornerstones. Some of these represent the early tools of Metallurgists, and others reveal patterns of dendrites and other phenomena familiar to people in the Metallurgical field.