Luminous Ground
2017 - ONGOING
Not long ago, we brought the skies closer to earth by covering the interior of domes and praying halls with polychrome tiles, representing heaven looking over us; heaven made from the earth; from clay on the bed of rivers, the soil that embraced layers and layers of organic and non-organic matter that flowed in the rivers over millions and millions of years.
Now, telescopes bring the skies closer to us; but looking at the night sky, with telescope or naked eye, we are unwittingly gazing billions of years back, only assuming we are witnessing the Now. The (GOODS/ERS2 Field) image from the Hubble telescope shatters the illusion as it shows around 7,500 galaxies spanning through more than 12 billion years of cosmic history, shaking the foundations of our anthropocentric history.
Mirroring this image of the cosmos on tiles, each iteration of the work is produced in-situ with the space. For example in the 2017 work for the diRosa Center for Contemporary Art the tiles installed on the gallery floor mirrored the exact dimensions of the skylight directly above. The work shifted the place of heaven and earth, this time by inviting us to shift the direction of our gaze, to imagine the “Original Gaze,” of the skies looking at us. And this calling, to shift the gaze, is a call to action—action as simple as imagining ourselves as the objects of the 12 billion-year gaze.
The tiles that are made in a process that brings the four elements together, not only mirror the heaven on earth, materially and directionally. Working with local soil to produce hand made tiles that are shaped and fired, and then treated with an altered cyanotype technique, in which the surface is treated with potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate, where the red iron changes into blue by being exposed to the Sun; from the color of the earth to the color of the sky. The work is birthed by light.
Cyanotype on one thousand handmade ceramic tiles made from California soil and exposed by sunlight // Be Not Still: Living in Uncertain Times at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA.
Cyanotype on one thousand handmade ceramic tiles made from California soil and exposed by sunlight // Be Not Still: Living in Uncertain Times at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA.
1800 handmade ceramic tiles made from California soil treated with cyanotype and exposed by sunlight // Asian Art Museum / San Francisco, CA
detail // 1800 handmade ceramic tiles made from California soil treated with cyanotype and exposed by sunlight // Asian Art Museum / San Francisco, CA
City of Oakland Public Art Commission at College Preparatory School in collaboration with Mosaika, Montréal and Jensen Architects, SF
