New media artist Caleb Hawkins sculpts with light

Some artists use paint or clay as mediums of expression, but Caleb Hawkins works with architecture, technology, algorithms and light. As design director at MASARY Studios, he executes luminescent, large-scale art installations.

Getting inside MASARY’s space in Fort Point feels like peeking behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain. The interdisciplinary designers, coders, musicians and animators who work here conjure awe-inspiring multimedia experiences using sound, light and a ton of technology.

In a darkened basement, Hawkins pointed to some of the tools of their trade. “As you can see here, we've got two laptops, a monitor, three light fixtures with four different lenses for the spotlight,” he said. On the day of a reporter's visit, he and his teammates were testing new programming software and a spotlight that looked like a small cannon.

Hawkins swapped out lenses to beam huge purple and green circles onto a brick wall. “Light is just such a powerful, and cosmic, natural element,” he said, “that holds a lot of wonder.”

Before working with light at MASARY, Hawkins studied architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology. But his inner tech artist and rebel urged him to switch gears. He also struggled to find Black role models in the architectural field early in his career. “I saw great people doing great work, but nobody looked like me,” he said.

So Hawkins decided to pursue a degree at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Then tragedy pushed him to do some major soul-searching. His father — a New Hampshire pastor — died in 2018, not long before Hawkins started design school. That loss made him reflect deeply on his path and purpose. He remembers telling himself, “I want to work for a job that doesn't exist yet.”

Hawkins’ father had always told him to find his own way. It didn’t take long for serendipity to step in.

“I was at a digital art party in some loft down in Chinatown with projections all over the walls, performance art on a long dining table, and a whole room dedicated to virtual reality artworks,” he said. When Hawkins looked across the room, he spotted MASARY’s co-founders Ryan Edwards and Sam Okerstrom-Lang.

“I recognized who they were,” he recounted, “and I went up to them and just started the conversation.”

Okerstrom-Lang picked up the story from there. “He knew everything about us and our studio,” he said, “and he carved out an opportunity and position with us.”

Hawkins started as an apprentice five years ago, and Okerstrom-Lang said he quickly picked up their multi-disciplinary practices. He’d already had experience with projection, 3D modeling, coding and percussion. Ultimately, the team at MASARY created the design director role for Hawkins. Now, the 30-year-old orchestrates the studio’s growing list of complex, site-specific projects in Boston and beyond.

“He’s doing computational design in 3D software and lots of measuring — he’s always got a laser measure on him, or a compass — to get precise, while also retaining poetry," Okerstrom-Lang said of the talents Hawkins brings to MASARY. "He’s really elevated our studio.”

Hawkins said he always starts by questioning the essence of each project. “And you turn it over, you stretch it, you pull it to try to have it be revealed.”

He worked on MASARY’s first permanent piece at the Boston Arts Academy. It was also his debut project outside the architectural realm. “Memory / Diffusion” is a responsive media wall that’s installed adjacent to a busy stairway. Hawkins designed the artwork, which includes artificial intelligence programming that plays back “memories” of activities around the school that cameras capture over time.

“We were using the term 'latent interaction,'” he said, “where a freshman could walk in, interact with the artwork their freshman year, and when they leave [in] four years, they can see themselves as a freshman in the artwork.”

The first work Hawkins designed himself is one of the immersive, night installations at the winter “SOLSTICE” event in Mount Auburn Cemetery. His “Eclipse” pairs an ethereal soundscape with a bright, 12-foot-diameter ring of light tucked into a wooded hollow.

“With haze and fog that's pumped into the environment,” Hawkins described, “allowing the disc to glow and appear as though it's hovering.”

The effect is mesmerizing. But Hawkins’ most personal piece can be found inside the chapel at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“This hospital saved my life,” he said sitting in the peaceful space. “When I was one year old, I had heart surgery. It was to treat a coarctation of my main aorta.”

Rabbi Susan Harris, the director of spiritual care at the hospital, likes to share the designer’s connection with patients because, she said, “it always gets a gasp.”

She remembers when MASARY won the commission to create an artwork for the non-denominational chapel. At that point, she was unaware of Hawkins’ history. The two went on to have long conversations about making a sculpture that would provide solace for anyone who needed it.

In the end, Hawkins crafted a three-dimensional piece titled “Refraction” that floats a few feet above the viewer’s head. “It’s like a billowing crescent that comes down from the coffered ceiling,” he said.

“Refraction” is composed of 263 iridescent, acrylic pendants illuminated by both natural and artificial light. “The palette of the lights changes for each season, and I just find that very moving,” Harris said, “and it speaks to how people experience time here.”

Hawkins spent hours inside another hospital chapel just down the street during the weeks before his father died. He hopes visitors to the light-filled space at Children’s find comfort, and even affirmation, when they set their gazes on “Refraction.”

“There are people who come in for all sorts of reasons — from dealing with something small to something very, very severe,” Hawkins said. “And what this artwork might give to someone, I think, for me, is that the artwork makes your head tilt up. “

For him, light transmits optimism. Now — as a techie and nerd at heart — Hawkins has found his place making new media art and exploring its infinite possibilities.

“It feels very authentic to who I am,” he said. “And it's something that I'm surely proud of.”