Portfolio: Photograms

In 2002 during a fellowship at the Kala Institute in Berkeley, California, I discovered a new visual cosmology inherent in the textured glass that is used in my sculptures. This cosmology came about through the process of making photograms, photographic images made without a camera by placing objects (in my case, bubbly glass) directly onto the surface of a photosensitive material such as photographic paper or film and then exposing them to light. These images were enlarged from a 4 x 5 photogram transparency of seedy or bubbly glass.

I was astounded to see intricate forms inside the air bubbles, a cosmic reference to photons: packets of light moving from the core of the sun into Earth’s atmosphere. These luminous forms reminded me of a description in the Tibetan Book of the Dead of a windy world called the Bardo, an intermediary place where beings go in between death and the next life.

Kinetic Sculpture | Drawing | Public Art/Installation

Editions are printed from a 4” x 5” photogram of glass.