With its newest art installation, the Birmingham-Southern Geodome Theatre continues to point visitors to Alabama’s rich environment.

In September, Birmingham artist Hunter Bell completed four kinetic art exhibitions in the Geodome’s window portals, each made with found and recycled objects from local scrapyards. Southern Environmental Center Director Roald Hazelhoff commissioned the project as a way to emphasize the Geodome’s purpose.

“The portals are a continuation of how we use the Geodome to take a closer look at Earth and Alabama in particular,” Hazelhoff says.

Each of the four portals represents a different element of Earth and focuses on Alabama specifically: the first shows Earth’s place among other planets in the solar system; the second shows Alabama’s waterways and biodiversity; the third shows light pollution in Alabama; and the fourth shows the City of Birmingham.

Bell incorporated lights and moving pieces into each portal, and you can see the state of Alabama in the background of all four. In the video below, you can view the portals in order as if you were walking by each one outside of the Geodome theatre entrance.

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The Geodome, which took the place of the former planetarium in 2018, serves as a high-tech environmental theatre and the first of its kind in Alabama. With 4K video projection capabilities and an IMAX-quality sound system, the Geodome now plays a crucial role in the Southern Environmental Center’s educational programming.

This project is the building’s second art installation, the first being the 21-panel mosaic mural along the cement steps to the Geodome entrance. The mural, completed in 2019 by Assistant Lecturer of Art Jurgen Tarrasch and Mamie Archibald ’16, depicts Alabama’s biodiversity in detail, each panel and step showcasing an endangered species or a species local to Alabama.

Hazelhoff often describes the Geodome in reference to the building’s former use – while the planetarium looked up from Earth, the Geodome looks down to Earth. And through both art installations, visitors will get a closer look at the diversity and beauty present in Alabama’s environment.