James Turrell at LACMA

Wow. I'm spending two weeks in Los Angeles this month, and I'm enjoying a lot of things I miss about living there. First and foremost: LACMA. I bought my ticket for the James Turrell show weeks ago, and it was worth the wait. I spent two hours sitting with each piece. I got too close to the work and the security guy hassled me a little bit (even though I didn't touch anything — how could I, it's just light!).

I sat for a good long while in this pink room. I sat on a bench and it almost seemed religious, like an altar or something. After I left this room, I entered the next room and it appeared green (even though it was just white). The sheer scale and effectiveness of Turrell's play with our perception of light and color is fantastic!

These holographic pieces were two dimensional mirror-like surfaces, but it appeared as though the reflections were reaching out toward me. Sometimes it's difficult to tell if the work is being projected or reflected onto surfaces or into spaces.

This show was even better than I imagined it would be. I wish I had sprung for the special light chamber experience, too! 

Spending Time with Lee Kelly

 

This summer I joined the MFA in Visual Studies program at Pacific Northwest College of Art. It was an amazing experience — I can’t say enough good things about it. As part of our summer intensive, we had the opportunity to spend time with sculptor Lee Kelly (what a generous and amazing person), and to make our own work at his woodland property and sculpture garden.

I was so inspired by my visits there that I created two ephemeral installations. Each one took a day to install and remove. There's something profound about the idea that something/someone can be present to us one moment, and then gone the next. Like a fragile spiderweb that exists in nature, so do these pieces.

The web piece was suspended about waist-height. I moved through and between each strand as I built it, like a dance. The process of creating it became primary; more important than the finished installation. In fact, it took me over four hours to build it, and about ten minutes to destroy it.

This smaller piece was created earlier in the summer. I found a branch in the woods and used cotton twine wrapped around two trees to suspend the branch in mid-air. It occurs to me now that suspension and gravity are themes the recur often in my work.