Time Pieces
Ballads are sung about time; adages, poetically phrased about time; physics equations written with the variable of time. And here, as an artist, I am visually rendering time.
Time is generally felt to be the progress of existence or the succession of events that occur in the apparently irreversible march from the big bang to the present, and presumedly, on into the future. Viewed in this way, time, artistically, could be like a film reel running continually. Viewed somewhat differently, though, time could be experienced as a discontinuous series of stills. In Time Pieces, I am borrowing from both perspectives while adding something new.
First, I am using the observation that time passage can be quantified in the natural world, as with the rings of a tree. So, using materials of a tree—cork and paper products—I have made abstract arrangements to represent the pattern of wood grain. In so doing, I have captured a moment in time, but the pattern set down continues to expand off the surface, mimicking the expansion of the universe since the big bang.
Second, many living things on earth are affected by the cycle of light and dark. As artists, we are influenced by the colors and shadows of this 24-hour cycle. From the red-orange sunrise with blue shadows, thru the green of midday with its reddish shadows, to the orange-red of sunset, and then through the blue-violet of the night sky until the next sunrise, the chroma of that carousel passes through all the hues on the color wheel. And shadows, being the color compliment of the light source, also pass through the same array of colors. Human retinas can detect three colors—red, green, and blue—but somehow, people can distinguish yellows, oranges, and violets, too.
What I have created, thanks to the generous assistance of two friends, Jackson Patterson and Colin Brooks, is a reproduction of this color carousel, using the three colors humans can detect, and sequencing them on a 60-second cycle to represent a 24-hour day on the summer solstice. As this color cycle keeps repeating, it suggests time passing, day by day.
The art pieces, with a cycle of lights illuminating them, therefore, show time as a still, and as a continuously repeating pattern of light and shadow.