To ‘Paint Air’ was the assignment in a painting class at college. Nina’s approach was to paint a chair floating upside down.
How do you depict air using photography, textile art, drawing or painting?
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This was one of my first assignments ever at Carnegie Mellon. Imagine a freshman coming into ‘concept studio 1’ and getting an assignment to depict air using any medium. It’s pretty scary and intimidating–and plain weird.
My solution was to trace the path of a ping pong ball during a game of ping pong. Conceptually, I wanted to cut out a box of space and time from the area smack in the middle of a ping pong game. Technically, I took string and zig-zagged it between two parallel boards, so that what you saw was this beautiful net–or crude loom.
That was six years ago, who knows exactly where I got that idea. But as for other artists, I’m in love with Rachel Whiteread’s work. I think she’s got a fantastic solution to this question. It’s awesome to think that her work could represent ‘air’, yet be created with literally the exact opposite idea–concrete!
I love Nina’s painting. Rachel Whiteread I only know for the Holocaust memorial in Vienna and transparent spaces…..facinating assignment…can feel my brain stretching.
Jeff,
Thank you for telling me about the path of your ping pong ball and Rachel Whitehead.
Looking at a photo of RW’s Plinth on Travalgar Square is, as Ginger put it, stretching my mind.
A friend told me once that she learned in art class to look at the space besides an object. So far, I have been unsuccessful at doing that. But RW’s illustration of negative space may now help me.
Having learned from you that ‘depicting air’ is a common assignment in art class, I now feel inspired by you and my daughter Nina to think about how I will do that.
Soon after I published this post, the internet access from my home went on strike. Here, I am commenting from the library in my village in northern Michigan.
I will be back in the afternoon and hope to learn more about depicting air.
Aside from the obvious (clouds, blowing snow or leaves, …), what I thought of as a photographer was showing the air between me and some distant mountains. I actually have a few like this, though not available to me at the moment. But that immediately made me think of local lithographer Russel Chatham, who gets some fabulous air on his web site.
When I first learned about ‘atmospheric perpsective’, it blew my mind. It just never occured to me that the distant landscape had a more muted color because of the air between us. As a light and seemingly ‘free’ element, the basic scientific structure of air is composed of tiny particles of mass. I hear that the more crap there is in the atmosphere, like dust and pollution, the more beautiful a sunset…
certainly true out here in New Mexico….with the wildfires and smoke there are often some incredible sunsets. also the air after a rain is great coupled with the sweet light in the late afternoon.
sometimes I think or feel the air between my lens and the object is some kind of spiritual energy…I have one photo I took recently of the clouds and mtns. that I haven’t decided what to call..either mountains winds or earth spirit…but the whole idea was to capture the space.
Ginger and Steve,
I hope that you will treat us to these photographs on some future posts.
Thanks for the Russel Chatham link.
The most beautiful (if that term is still allowed) sunsets I have encountered are out at Mentor Headlands on a lambent summer evening. The sun might be dropping through clouds whose distance makes them gentle. The water and the sky meet at a place defined by a subtle shift in the glowing pinks and gunmetal grays. The air is palpable with light and with gulls moving in an easy conversation with the sky and the water.
Otherwise I like to see smoke as it drifts through a laser beam. Kind of an air apparent.
Jay,
I am glad that someone else also enjoys midwestern landscapes. Wikipedia has photograph of it.
You give two very different images – nature and technology.
Birgit:
I take it that you might live in the Traverse City area.
I saw a sunset from some rather large dunes in the vicinity and it was very nice.
I guess that sometimes I will deal with the affect and the effect.
Birgit,
The assignment you describe made me shudder and think once again how lucky I was not to have encountered some forms of art training. I could never, I thought, have managed such a task with anything like success.
It was only today that I realized that all this last week I have been working on an textile piece called “Updraft!” Duh!
It’s easier to stitch air than it is to paint it. And yes, you may insert a smiley face right after that sentence.
June,
I hope that you show us “Updraft” here on A&P once it is finished.
This is an example of how David has illustrated air
http://davidpalmerstudio.com/American_Dreams/attempts_17.html
clouds?!
Yes, Angela,
clouds have symbolic meaning in your paintings.