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GALLERIES

CHAMPLAIN COLLEGE ART GALLERY

FEBRUARY 2024

 

This was an exhibit of my work at the art gallery of Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont in February 2024.  It was accompanied by a truly extraordinary sound installation created by Champlain College professor John Levee and his student Graham Sullivan, a sampling of which can be heard in the video.

 

This is the write-up that I included with the exhibit:

 

While my work can be characterized as light art, I don’t particularly think of myself as a light artist in the currently understood sense.  A lot of light art these days is heavy on technology, employing everything from computer programs and elaborate lighting arrays to lit-up drones in the sky.  The effect can be really cool, but I think much of the human element can get lost in the spectacle.  And so while the colored filters I use in my art are made for high-tech applications, like medical devices and astronomical imaging, I use them simply as a means to get color (admittedly very flashy color) into my art, the beams of light comparable to paint brush strokes.  As an exploration of color I see my work as having more of an affinity with Abstract Expressionist painters like Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko than with light artists such as James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson (both of whose work I do love, bombast and all). 

 

The pieces in this exhibit are meant to create a space where the viewer becomes absorbed in light and color.  The experience can be meditative, it can be energizing, it can promote wonder, it can even be meh.  I don’t want to tell people how to engage with it; everyone should have their own personal experience.  I do, though, encourage people to take a little bit of time looking at the pieces.  The more you look the more things you might notice: subtle shadings of color, perceptions of depth, different intensities of light, the beauty of black as a color, and things I probably haven’t even noticed myself.  And as you get more absorbed by what you’re seeing my hope is that it might quiet your mind a little, allowing you to become more present to the moment and to the power and beauty of pure light and color.

The first video, of me talking about my work at the opening of this exhibit, was created by Brett Gonzalez, a very talented student at Champlain College.

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