The theme for this month of Goodbye Art was
fire. I thought it offered many valuable
points of view and would be quite fun to
take on. Check out the Jimi Hendrix piece
to see how the month started.
For this piece I went to Ikea and found
their big bags of tea candles, I think I
bought a thousand and settled into using
400, in a 20x20 square.
Finding the image was the hard part. In
hindsight I could have Princes Diana,
because it just so happened I post this
project and video on the anniversary of her
death. But why did I pick the image I did?
It is of a boy that was living in poverty.
The candles are all of the people in his
life that can help or not. If they are not
lit they offer no help. As the piece was
constructed the 400 candles were lit blown
out and relit, so some of the candles that
were previously dormant were now giving off
light/hope to the boy in his life. Along
the same lines, there were a few that were
always lit and some that were always dormant
as we find our lives and connections with
people work in similar ways. The reason it
was done in segments is because this is the
fragmentation of society. We all have
groups we belong to and that needed to come
across in the piece. You'll find that as
you watch the video, there is a frame
missing, but not in the final photo, this is
when we lose touch with a group, we may or
may not come back to them.
The production of this piece was pretty
straight forward. I had my image which I
fragmented into essentially a map of what
candles to lite and which ones not to lite.
After doing this I set up my frame and
recording location for the video. I got my
camera well above the work so I wouldn't hit
my head and then tossed out and organized
the 400 candles. I knew ahead of time I
would need to be doing this at night,
because of the light that would pour in
through the windows was difficult to
eliminate entirely.
I then set to task lighting the appropriate
candles, one set at a time. Blowing them
out and starting over. It was pretty cool
to see the heat coming off of them. And
when I got too many lit they would create a
vacuum on the sides sucking in the air and
blowing it out through the center where the
heat was at its best. This process would
quite often blow some of the candles out
that were along the edge.
This is a project I hope to repeat at some
point and take it a bit further. Hope you
enjoyed.
fire. I thought it offered many valuable
points of view and would be quite fun to
take on. Check out the Jimi Hendrix piece
to see how the month started.
For this piece I went to Ikea and found
their big bags of tea candles, I think I
bought a thousand and settled into using
400, in a 20x20 square.
Finding the image was the hard part. In
hindsight I could have Princes Diana,
because it just so happened I post this
project and video on the anniversary of her
death. But why did I pick the image I did?
It is of a boy that was living in poverty.
The candles are all of the people in his
life that can help or not. If they are not
lit they offer no help. As the piece was
constructed the 400 candles were lit blown
out and relit, so some of the candles that
were previously dormant were now giving off
light/hope to the boy in his life. Along
the same lines, there were a few that were
always lit and some that were always dormant
as we find our lives and connections with
people work in similar ways. The reason it
was done in segments is because this is the
fragmentation of society. We all have
groups we belong to and that needed to come
across in the piece. You'll find that as
you watch the video, there is a frame
missing, but not in the final photo, this is
when we lose touch with a group, we may or
may not come back to them.
The production of this piece was pretty
straight forward. I had my image which I
fragmented into essentially a map of what
candles to lite and which ones not to lite.
After doing this I set up my frame and
recording location for the video. I got my
camera well above the work so I wouldn't hit
my head and then tossed out and organized
the 400 candles. I knew ahead of time I
would need to be doing this at night,
because of the light that would pour in
through the windows was difficult to
eliminate entirely.
I then set to task lighting the appropriate
candles, one set at a time. Blowing them
out and starting over. It was pretty cool
to see the heat coming off of them. And
when I got too many lit they would create a
vacuum on the sides sucking in the air and
blowing it out through the center where the
heat was at its best. This process would
quite often blow some of the candles out
that were along the edge.
This is a project I hope to repeat at some
point and take it a bit further. Hope you
enjoyed.