Threshold of light / from here to there, now to then… collezione peggy guggenheim 1994 to stonescape 2016

“we eat light, drink it in through our skins. With a little more exposure to light, you feel part of things physically.
i like feeling the power of light and space physically because then you can order it materially.
seeing is a very sensuous act-there’s a sweet deliciousness to feeling yourself see something.” – james turrell

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above / canaletto’s “molo and piazetta san marco”/before 1755, bill viola’s “veiling room” from buried secrets/venice biennale 1995, sunrise in venice/alla dogana 2000, the approach to Li Galli from punto di sorrento/photo by lloyd bernberg, floating in the bay of Li Galli/giovanni’s island of the sirens, my sirens-inspired shedding skins collection/britt,camalo and i/ 2001, herbert james draper’s “ulysses and the sirens” 1901.

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“There’s another world out there just beyond the world we’re in.
It’s just on the other side of that translucent, semitransparent surface.” ~ bill viola

“this time he is close to her, he speaks to her. She welcomes him without surprise. they are without memories, without plans. time builds itself painlessly around them. their only landmarks are the flavour of the moment they are living and the markings on the walls.” ~ chris marker, la jetee

“I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between.
If there’s any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something.
I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.” ~ richard linklater, before sunrise

above / peter sellars in telluride, a still from giuseppe tornatore’s cinema paradiso/1990, our view of the mountains through rose colored glasses/telluride 2014; stills from chris marker’s la jette/1962…

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“you need to imagine a space, create it and then live in it” ~ peter sellars (to me, at Cafe Milano, Berkeley, Fall 2011)

above / chiharu shiota’s “the key in the hand” exhibit for Japan Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2015, my 40th birthday cake at chez panisse made by stacie pierce and presented by alice waters nov 28th 2011, a (manipulated) video still of james turrell’s rodeo crater, salon #77/the last supper at my 4th street berkeley atelier/june 20th 2015 (photo: stu maschwitz), caravaggio’s “the calling of saint matthew” 1599, ides of march salon dinner in tribecca/2015, venice beach garden party/salon #91 April 30th 2016, nyc salon #93/june 25th 2016

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light / noun / the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible / illumination, luminescenze, brillance, dazzle, glow
light / adjective / of little weight, gentle, delicate, free from worry or unhappiness
light / verb / come upon or discover by chance
dark / adjective / approaching black in shade / the absence of light in a place

chiaroscuro / an effect of contrasted light and shadow created by light falling unevenly or from a particular direction on something.
latin, clarus /clear, bright ~ latin, obscurus / dark, obscure

above / james turrell’s “bridget’s bardot” exhibited in wolfsburg 2008, turrell in front of roden crater, and his work in context/exhibited in Las Vegas’s Louis Vuitton, stills from drake’s music video “hotline bling” and royal and i with drake at michael mina, ayesha curry, adam sobel’s pop-up International Smoke. Leo Villareal/Ben Davis Bay Lights on the night of the Super Bowl

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it’s through light and space, in time and memory that we create the worlds we decide to take part in and become part of, and in turn become part of us. the worlds we create are many / and we do it with all kinds of ingredients ~ and it’s that balance of what we put in our bodies, on our bodies and those spaces we choose to inhabit and how they in turn inhabit us. for me, sometimes my medium is cloth ~ the glorious textures of silks and wools and fleeces that together make something that becomes what it was meant to be /and to then be transformed into who you were meant to be, then, and there. at other times it’s people, filmic moments, or the greens of lettuces and dressings of vinaigrettes and goddesses, mixed with thyme and chervil and basil, blended with farro, risotto, pasta to feed the hunger that is within ~ all of us. to nourish and to care for / that secret of curation ~ curare, so my dear friend charlotte tells me. a word i had never before deconstructed as so, overused as it is. but curate, as in the late 14th century “spiritual guide” from curatus / one responsible for the care of souls … past participle of curare / to take care of… so to curate people around a table, gathered, communing, connecting. but then, what about the space, imagined, created and realized ~ experienced, encompassed, embraced and… lived in. when it all comes together, it’s magic. and it’s this magic that keeps us doing it, being part of it, anticipating it and yes, inhabiting it when we say yes to an invitation that is a promise of something, an experience of the other, and ultimately an act of curatus…

from my mid 20s in venice italy, interning and experiencing the beautiful collection of the collezione peggy guggenheim, in a venice that centered around campo santa margherita and campo sant’angelo where yvette and i roomed together, and experienced a venice in a time past that is thrown into a present day where she works with the master of light James Turrell and his living masterpiece Roden Crater… in between, those moments that make us who we are, and then bring us back to who we were… and the difference between then and now, and there and here isn’t as far as one thought. below, a few recollections of how we got here, and why… and the two gatherings that brought us back together in this very moment of time, for this very meaningful purpose ~ a rethinking of the beauty of the intersection of light/space through time/memory ~ and the experiences that we have that hold these moments together, those little madeleine that our senses give us over to, again and again, and that perfect balance of light and dark / of lightness and weight ~ that make us feel present, embodied, complete ~

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“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden,
the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air,
to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” ~ milan kundera, the unbearable lightness of being

above / chasing, capturing and experiencing light through the streets of havana, cuba/photo jock mcdonald, my unbearable lightness of being collection 2014/part of deb durant’s curated 50/50 light exhibition in berkeley, my “becoming me” installation/visual collage for Around the World with Oscar/YBCA 2016, james turrell’s most recent show at pace gallery in palo alto; shoes, in context ~ james, yvette, bay lights/illuminate the arts ben davis and vanessa inn.

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Norah and Norman Stone’s STONESCAPE / James Turrell’s SKYSCAPE / July 9th 2016
with yvette lee, executive director of james turrell’s skystone foundation, and charlotte eyerman, executive director of monterey museum of art
* to see all the pics from Drew Altizer, click HERE

“space has a way of looking.
it seems like it has a presence of vision.
when you come into it, it is there, it’s been waiting for you.”
~ james turrell

“My encounter with another world and another culture and the beginnings of an attachment to them had set up an irritation,
barely perceptible but incurable-rather like unrequited love, like a symptom of the hopelessness of trying to grasp what is boundless,
or unite what cannot be joined; a reminder of how finite, how curtailed, our experience on earth must be” ~ andrei tarkovsky