Light

Those of you that follow my instagram feed may have seen my post about recently relating strongly to a prior project while on vacation. Specifically, I took some snaps of some clouds, and it echoed for me from an Instagram project I did during 2017 that I titled and tagged #abstractionallaroundus (the images are all still up, just follow this link to my IG post).

What I loved about taking the photos of the clouds back then was their immediacy– you don’t need words to process your reaction to an amazing cloud formation- and also their fleeting nature. There was an element of chance- happenstance is really a better word- to them as each one will never exist again, a theme (impermanence) I’ve returned to since. Part of the reason I eventually stopped taking the images was that I felt I should be more present for the moments in which I stopped to experience awe, a concept I’ve visited on this blog as well.

The pretty amazing things water does in our atmosphere has to do with light, and I think my interest in the same may have been part of how my fascination developed. I hadn’t made the connection until I returned, and realized upon stepping into my studio, where I’ve been working with lighting as a material, that the connection was worth reflecting on (haha).

Regular readers know about my interest in contradiction and I am drawn to the idea that a work could literally have more than one appearance (given a change in lighting). The viewers act of changing the lighting also gives the work an experiential dimension.

Further, light and use of the same as a “material” points to opticality, at least in the visual arts. Similar to the way using cubes (for me) points at Modernism and formalist projects (and on towards contemplation), light and opticality points at the Light and Space movement which accomplishes much the same. Paint also takes on physicality when it is applied on glass, which points at its materiality. I think a nod in that direction is more appropriate for my practice which is centered in the experiential- an added bonus is that paint on a transparent surface offers a sort of contradiction in that the “painting” is on a surface and also now at least appears to be an object as well.