The colors of the 365 panes of glass were selected by Finch’s study of the Morgan’s manuscripts. The Morgan contains America’s largest collection of Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts hand written and elaborately illustrated books of prayers and images of the seasons. “A Certain Slant of Light” (2014) was installed in the Gilbert Court of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. A Dickinson poem (1861) begins, “There is a certain slant of sunlight…” Dickinson said she wrote the poem, “before I get my eyes put out.” Finch remarked, “She took things that the rest of us would ignore–something as simple as this breeze blowing through her window–as a springboard for a meditation on something much bigger.” The work is one of several works inspired by Dickinson. “Sunlight in an Empty Room, Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom” (2004) (10 feet high by 16.6 feet wide) records, with time lapse photography, a day-long path of sunlight crossing her bedroom. His interest in literature led him Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, where she lived her entire life, often in seclusion. He visits specific locations such as Freud’s office in Vienna, the OK Corral, Loch Ness, Niagara Falls, and Yellowstone Park to record the color and light and to soak up experiences. “Sunlight in an Empty Room (Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom) (2004)įinch’s themes and influences are eclectic and include a range of natural phenomena: dawn, sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and fog. His art allows viewers both the space and the time to reflect and experience personal memories. His art may include drawing, watercolor, video, glass, fluorescent light, and even scotch tape. Beyond direct observation and photography, he often uses a colorimeter that measures color and temperature of light, and an anemometer that measure the wind. After graduating in 1989 with a Masters in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, Finch discovered his subject: light and color in combination with time and space. Spencer Finch was selected to create the memorial piece because of his previous works that were about time and light, and more importantly about memory. The blue squares are hung individually in the manner of the hundreds of missing person notices posted all over New York City for weeks after 9/11. Across the blue squares is an inscription from Virgil’s Aeneid that reads : “No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time.” The letters were forged by New Mexico artist Tom Joyce with used metal salvaged from the World Trade Center. Each is a different shade of blue to commemorate each individual who died that day and in the 1983 bombing in the garage of the World Trade Center. The work consists of 2,983 one-foot-by-one-foot squares that Finch hand painted on Fabriano watercolor paper. When asked about the attack that morning, those who responded described the sky as a clear blue. For Finch art can do more it can ‘ignite our capacity for wonder’.” Excerpt from Susan Cross, What Time Is It On The Sun pp.“Trying to remember the color of the sky on that September Morning” (2014) Like the ancientpractitioners of the hermetic arts, who saw changes as the most fundamental truth of the universe, the artist doesn’talways provide an answer in his investigations. In Finch’s universe if you wait a few hours, the sun mayvery well change a leaden hue into gold. Instead, his dogged method reinforces the fleeting, temporal nature ofthe observed world, illustrating his own version of a theory of Whether he is relying on his own powers of observation or using a colorimeter,a device that reads the average color and temperature of light,the artist employs a scientific method to achieve poetic ends.Contrary to what one might expect, Finch’s efforts towardaccuracy – the precise measurements he takes under different conditions and at different times of day – resist, in the end, a definitive result or single empirical truth about his subject. “Finch carefully records the invisible world, while simultaneouslystriving to understand what might lie beyond it. “This edition was inspired by my recent project on the High Line.It was developed in conjunction with the Brodsky Center forInnovative Editions in a process through which color pigments areinfused in each unique handmade piece during the paper-making Spencer Finch, The River That Flows Both Ways (Hudson River, June 12,2008 Early Morning Effect 9:20 am, Late Morning Effect 11:29 am,Noon Effect 12:10 pm, Afternoon Effect 3:54 pm, Evening Effect1:08 pm), 2011, 5 works at 18” x 24”.
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