Growing up in the unincorporated community of Adamstown, Maryland, Scott Pennington never had much to do during summer breaks. “My family was not wealthy or wildly poor, but we lived in a blue-collar town with lots of people who didn’t take vacations every year,” recalls the installation artist, who now lives and works in Baltimore. “When the carnival passed through, the entire town would go wild. Everyone went because that was our vacation, coming to us.”
Decades later, Scott’s wildly inventive installations pay homage to the “temporary wonderland” that materialized in his working-class town and vanished just as quickly. His trademark aesthetic—a zany mix of primary colors, blinking lights, and scads of “shoot me” yellow ducks—evolved gradually after nearly a decade as an independent woodworker creating custom furniture and cabinets for clients. During this time, Scott’s woodshop doubled as his personal studio, where he parlayed his woodworking skills into small assemblages that steadily grew in size and complexity.
His first big installation, an ambitious wooden spaceship complete with fake control panels and manned by an alien crew, delighted crowds at Artscape 2008 by inviting them to come aboard and explore. Two years later, he took things even further with a foam machine that sprayed pink and blue froth into the street and all over festival goers. Now a five-time participant in Baltimore’s renowned outdoor arts festival—the largest in the nation—Scott wouldn’t create what he considers his first “true” carnival piece until 2014’s “SuperGame!,” a six-sided booth where Artscape attendees played classic carnival games set to an 80s soundtrack.
“Artscape itself has a carnivalesque quality to it because there are roaming performers, art cars, and installations,” says Scott, who continues to create immersive installations that evoke the magic, mischief, and mayhem of the carnivals he remembers from childhood. “Realizing that I really responded to the aesthetics of a small-town carnival, I started to think more and more about my upbringing in Adamstown, Maryland, and how important the carnival was to the people of our town. We weren’t wealthy, but we had the carnival.”
Scott’s work appears in our July 2025 exhibition, Every Emotion All at Once. Visit the exhibition via the button below, then scroll through to read our interview with Scott Pennington.
In Today’s Q+Art Interview…
Scott Pennington discusses the importance of collaboration in his work, explains why he taught himself to code, and reveals how the Watts Towers of Los Angeles have shaped his creative path.
Tell me about ‘SuperGame!’ What kinds of games could you play?
Scott Pennington: The most successful game was called Political Punk Rack. We tried to give all the games a modern twist. Political Punk Rack had all the little dolls you knocked down with the beanbag. They were all politicians, some movie stars, and some wild cards like Mr. T or Carmen Electra from the ’90s. We also had a Donald Trump and a Hillary Clinton.
How does a complex work like ‘SuperGame!’ come together?
SP: I had a lot of volunteers for “SuperGame!”; a couple of people handled the sound, lights, and music for me. I have this amazing 30-minute musical collage that my friend PJ, who's an electronic musician, made. I went to him one day and said, “I want ’80s music, electronic sounds, old video game sounds, just like a collage.” And he made this amazing sound piece that just blew me away.
Given your background in woodworking and cabinetry, I'm curious about how you eventually integrated lighting and kinetic components into your work. Did you initially learn the technical skills necessary for projects like ‘SuperGame!’ during your furniture-making days, or did you pick them up later on out of necessity?
SP: “SuperGame!” was such an involved project. I called in all the favors I possibly could, and while it was happening, I was like, I'm asking so much of my peers and my fellow artists that this is probably the last time I can do this.
I realized if I want to keep working like this, I have to learn how to use an Arduino myself, how to wire up my own relays, and how to write code to make things blink the way I want them to blink. And so I spent the next couple of years figuring all that out. There's a piece called “Bombers” that is carnivalesque and references my childhood fascination with war. My friends and I used to do these really complicated drawings of battlefields with little stick figures shooting each other down in planes. We would have these competitions about how violent we could make it. But that's the first piece that I did my own programming for. And the code is three feet long because I had to write lines for every turn on or off of the light.
After that, between “Bombers” and “Duck Pond III,” I discovered some little formulas that greatly simplified the code for me, and that is how I've been writing code for the past seven years. I taught myself just enough about coding and electronics to do exactly what I want with the structures I'm building.
Some of your pieces feel immediately interactive, while works like ‘The Midway’ seem less so. How do you define the participatory or interactive elements of your work? The dark setting definitely gives them an immersive quality.
SP: I think so, too. Maybe interactive isn't the right word for “The Midway.” I built it with a center space that was intended to highlight people so they could get a good photo. When you see “The Midway” where it was originally displayed at an event called Garden Glow, which takes place at the topiary garden here in Maryland called Ladew Gardens, it feels more like people are interacting with it than viewing it. They’re experiencing it.
People take their photo in front of my work because it's playful and fun and bright. They don't realize that it's dark and you're going to be backlit, so nobody will see.
How do you think the interaction with your public art differs from the experience of viewing your work in a gallery setting? What do you notice about how people engage with your art in these two environments?
SP: In 2016, we had an event here in Baltimore called Light City, where I included a piece called “The Zipper.” There's also a piece called “The Spider.” Those are both from 2016 and were built along with several other pieces to be part of Light City. It was also immersive and interactive to a certain degree. I built benches to accompany those pieces so people could just sit and enjoy the environment.
When you do something outside, an exterior piece, the experiences are different across the board. You are going to an event at a park or a light-based art festival, that kind of thing. They are generally such public events that you'll get a larger swath of people. Not just art enthusiasts, but people who would go to an outdoor festival of almost any kind. I liked that because you are exposing your work to many more people. When I did that Light City event, it was a seven-day thing, and I was there the whole time just making sure everything was working properly, changing light bulbs, and stopping people from touching light bulbs, which they do all the time. It's definitely interactive in that way. People love to touch light bulbs.
How about in the gallery? Are your gallery pieces designed for a different impact?
SP: When you do a piece in a gallery, it’s a much quieter experience, which is interesting for my work specifically, because the electronic relays that make the lights blink on and off, some of them make a tiny little click sound every time a lightbulb blinks because there's a little metal relay making contact. That is a really hypnotic and pleasing sound to me. People tell me how great or how much they respond to that sound during a show. I think when the work is in an interior space, it is a much quieter experience and therefore much more meditative.
I also have to pay much more attention to the details of the structure because people are going to be much more critical of any roughness to the paint job or the glue seams in a gallery. When I do something that's going to be outside, there are certain things the darkness will hide.
Your work evokes a sense of joy, which stands out in a landscape where many artists understandably process grief and depression. Why do you think so few pieces celebrate joy, and how does the concept of a ‘temporary wonderland’ play into your artistic vision, especially in relation to your childhood memories of carnivals?
SP: This is something I haven't really thought about in a while, but there's enough depression and sadness in the world that creating the term “temporary wonderland” is in pretty much every artist statement I've written for years. But that really is the intent. I feel like I have a couple of traumatic memories from carnivals as a child, a couple of things that don't necessarily haunt me, but I think about them as pretty messed up. The joy is with the carnival, but on the outer edges of the carnival, that's where some seedy shit's going down.
I have had people pry and try to figure out, well, what is the dark secret? And I'm like, well, maybe I have my dark secret, but that's not what I'm building here. There is no trauma.
What artists or works of art inspire your work the most?
SP: I do think the work of Jasper Johns is very relevant. Also, some of Frank Stella’s prints are really interesting, but the larger metal sculptures he did are also inspiring to me. Friends With You is an arts organization that does a lot of inflatable environments that are very colorful and carnivalesque, with lots of clouds and funny figures. I tend to gravitate toward artists or collective artists who create environments, either interactive or immersive.
In elementary school, my art teacher played a video one day, which was an old documentary of the Watts Towers. They're really amazing. I went in the ’90s, on a road trip out there, and a buddy and I went to visit them, but they were being heavily remodeled, so there was a fence up. You could just see the top peeking out from the fence. But they're like four or five stories tall. They're really cool and well worth a quick Google. Seeing that video of those towers kind of opened my creative impulses.
Last year, I went to Los Angeles to see [art amusement park] Luna Luna, and on the same trip, saw the Watts Towers again. It was really interesting revisiting the thing that turned my creativity on and seeing how it connects with what I’m doing now.
