Artist statement
Light races in, piercing the crystal wall. The reports of its travel from the other side are hastily compiled and delivered without editorial comment.
Muffled shapes are held apart by the encasing ice, relationships defined by confinement. Detached from context, they hover at the edges of vision. The visible becomes invisible and then visible again.
Normal perception lies as close as breath to an eternal universe of meaning, unaffected by our inattention. Nested, layered, interpenetrating with experience, reflecting and refracting again and again until the photons slip away at last on one last unexpected angle.
Out of the air, ice catches light and the prosaic, the quotidian is illuminated by infinity.
Technical Notes
These digital images were taken outside using a Pentax K10D with a Pentax-DA 16–45 mm lens in January 2008. Slabs of ice were set upright and photographed with the midday sun behind them. The slabs ranged in size from a few inches across to more than a metre tall. The smaller slabs were made by filling a variety of containers with water. The larger slabs were made by pouring water into a hollow in the snow lined with plastic sheeting. Nature took care of the freezing. Objects of several kinds were frozen into some of the slabs. Other objects were placed in front or behind the slabs.