Growing up in East Los Angeles I was surrounded by lights and I have always been fascinated at how the specific quality of light in the city varies to produce a range of tones, and colors. Since childhood, my father has decorated our house with Christmas lights that would transform it completely. I loved seeing how the colorful lights illuminated the walls of the house working to activate and transform the space. Through the years I began to develop a habit of photographing lights throughout the city that would catch my attention, such as those of traffic lights and lamp posts. During my first year at Dickinson I took a photography course where I learned how to take long exposure photos that resulted in the individual light being transformed into colorful, line-based abstractions. As I took more long exposure photos, I began to notice how much light surrounds us, and how almost every light source has a unique quality. This has pushed me to develop a practice that uses a minimal amount of physical materials, with a focus on exploring how the impact light has on our perception of a specific space or environment. Like a fish in water, people are surrounded by light, but don’t give it much thought. the California Light and Space movement of the 1960’s consisted of artists who experimented with the perceptual phenomena of light and reflective materials. Artists such as Robert Irwin and James Turrell would use reflective materials, geometric abstractions, artificial lighting within objects, and architecture to create a sensory experience. Certain colors and combinations had an effect on the viewer for example, a blue room tends to calm people because of its cold tone, in comparison a red room that tends to agitate because of its stimulating effect on the eye. These same ideas have copelled my own studio practice. |