Elements

Medium: shaved ice
Artists: Zaha Hadid & Cai Guo-Qiang
Project: The Snow Show Project
About their process, Guo-Qiang writes "I poured vodka over Zaha Hadid's fluid ice and snow structure and set alight the liquid to produce a cool, blue flame that wrapped the installation in warmth." Hadid shares, "Ice was treated as a medium to be sculpted and carved. Vaulting, floating spaces and canyons formed an area that enveloped visitors in a glowing ever-changing glacier."

Elaine showed us The Snow Show project earlier this term. I revisited the site today; it catalogues work through March 2006, whereas the hard copy book focuses on the massive exhibit held in Finnish Lapland in early 2004 edited by Lance Fung.

The book in my opinion offers better documentation than the website. The site is great because it is free and is available everywhere, but the book has extraordinary photos and documents results of collaborations between architects and visual artists. I should note that I personally feel architects are artists. Architects, in the course of their study, learn engineering and structure more often than "artists" but in the end, it's all part of a continuum of experiences and learning. Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. He trained in stage design in Shanghai. Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1950. She studied mathematics in Beirut and architecture in London.


In the Fung book, I was struck by a collaboration between two artists I admire, both of whom have been discussed in prior sessions in Elaine's class. One collaborator is the pyrotechnically imaginative Cai Guo-Qiang and the other is the architecturally spellbinding creative force behind structures which seem to defy gravity, Zaha Hadid

The play of luminosity and shadow with fire and ice is an amazing shaping of the elements that is simultaneously loose and controlled. It was at once fixed and in a state of constant change.

I love this work because it is about great collaboration, about playfulness, about setting up a controlled environment and then relinquishing control, and ultimately, about wonderful light.

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy's works in nature are often about the play of light. He is one of my heroes.

Sunrise Time Lapse

I shot this sunrise video in HD format Monday, Nov 3 between 6-7:30 AM. The 27 second clip is a distillation of 45 minutes of real time.

James Nachtwey

Czechoslovakia, 1990--Heavy metals contaminated the air of an aluminum factory. (from the "Industrial Pollution" gallery on his website)

James Nachtwey chooses to use his camera to bear witness and provide testimony to human rights abuses, environmental disasters, and the tragedies of war. In 2007, he received a TED prize in which he shared his wish: to share a vital story with the world.

All his images show great care for the subject depicted; one key element in many of his images is his choice to sculpt with light. Some detractors claim he aestheticizes atrocity. I feel he uses his craft to be a storyteller of a very layered and complex problem. The great care with which he composes his images only draws me in further, creating space to contemplate the issue.

Boubacar Toure Mandemory

This photo, Couleurs de Peche, is from the series Capitales Africaines, 2000-2005. The intersection of color and light is energizing for me. I love how this image celebrates life. Mandemory is a self-taught photographer who is part of a contemporary movement in Africa to reject ethnographic representations of the continent.

Moshekwa Langa

Untitled XXI, 2005
For me, this photo is about a peace that is just out of reach. I somehow don't want to sit in the chair. It feels like an invitation to stand back, looking for a place of quiet. It is not a warm room, yet it is not cold either. I love how there is nuance in what seems to be a simple scene. I really appreciate how the light bathes the right of the frame while gently tapering off to the left.

The artist was born in 1975 in South Africa and now lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He creates works that are poetic and personal while also engaging in the worlds of art, politics, and popular culture. He often explores themes of exile. Perhaps that is what I see in this photo: a place that once was home but is no longer available for sitting.

Samantha Appleton

Samantha Appleton is a photojournalist. Her current work has been in the US covering the presidential race. She plunged into photojournalism in the aftermath of 9/11, rushing to NY from Maine to document the recovery efforts at the World Trade Center site. She has developed photo essays on Malaria in Africa; fishing communities in Maine; the war in Iraq.

In this image from Iraq, she creates depth with light and shadow and speaks volumes in one frame.

Art Practice

I've been trying to incorporate Elaine's philosophy shared last week regarding practicing art, making time to think and do a little each day. It really struck me and I like the idea of creating space for it, to allow the routine to prompt something unexpected. With music and athletics, it's a given that practitioners have to practice. So too with drawing and photography and filmmaking, etc. I'm enjoying the idea of making time each day for art practice.

Today, I was up at 5:00 AM to do timelapse filming of darkness into sunrise into morning. It was great. The exercise was one of patience and planning. It was also practice. I wanted to experiment because I have never done timelapse filming before. I decided to film a three-hour interval in real time in order to turn it into three minutes of screen time. Will post the results when I cut the movie. I chose the sunrise moment because I want to see the rapidly changing light distilled even further in a time lapse.

Alexis Bittar

Jewelry designer Alexis Bittar has a "Lucite" series created by hand painting and hand sculpting each piece. I love the luminosity.

Gabriel Orozco

This work is a photo by artist Gabriel Orozco.

The piece is called Pelota in Agua (Ball in Water), 1994.

I love the light patterns he creates in this piece. I especially appreciate his process: that he takes a ball floating in a puddle to suggest a celestial object in a cloud-streaked sky. I enjoy his work, and I'm inspired that he creates in many mediums: sculpture, drawing, photography, installation, and video. Orozco's pieces are playful and lyrical. He often draws on found objects for his inspiration.

A few years ago the Guggenheim in NY had an exhibit entitled "Moving Pictures" with Orozco, and artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Ann Hamilton, Kara Walker, Shirin Neshat. Notes from the Guggenheim's exhibit are a good description of Orozco's process: Sometimes, he transforms the ordinary just by the act of naming, as he does with titles such as Pulpo (Octopus, 1991) which bestows a symbolic, associative meaning onto a tangle of pipes, and Dos parejas (Two Couples, 1990) which anthropomorphizes pairs of clay vases.