Artist's work for federal courthouse on display at Orlando Museum of Art

The museum held an event in Held's honor on March 10.

"We are so pleased to exhibit Al Held's designs for the windows for the new federal courthouse and to give the community a preview of the watercolor designs that will be transformed into larger-than-life glass artworks, filling the courthouse entrance with brilliant color and energy," Marena Grant Morrisey, executive director of the museum, said Thursday night. "We are strong advocates for the Art in Architecture Program that integrates art into public places."

The main window, which is 50 feet high by 50 feet wide, will serve as a focal point of the courthouse when it opens in 2007. Held also is donating designs for five other small glass windows for the project. The works feature swirling abstract forms, complex geometric detail and saturated color that draw eyes upward to create a feeling of ascendancy.

Over the next few months, fabricators who specialize in architectural glass will transform Held's painted designs into laminated art glass, a technique that layers blown antique glass between two clear panes.

The $82.7 million U.S. Courthouse, on the northeast corner of Division Avenue and Central Boulevard, involves an expansion and annex to the existing 280,000-square-foot George C. Young U.S. Courthouse.

In a joint venture with Leers Weinzapfel Association in Boston, HLM Design-Heery International is the architect and engineer of record for the project.

The project began in second-quarter 2004 and is slated for completion in the first quarter of 2007.