Under the Light of a Canopy: Qualities of Opacity and Transparency

“…we work the synthetic cloth with this most successful one because it comes on at yards, a roll, which gives you a chance to work the whole space, do things, and it comes in various weights. I’ve always experienced like a heavy weight without color but now to use lighter weights, lighter weights. So it’s transparent as well as solid. Paint coagulates. I mean it’s just there. We’ve practiced with the spray gun of actually these new spray guns which can be dialed from light to heavy. Well, the stretchers are the container. Escape- or without the stretcher you have the space. There’s an articulation of, you know, the mixing. I’ll let you make paint work. How you make it bring it all, a substance of color. An element of color that is either light or dark within its gradation or its contrast or you teach yourself to really make a certain yellow and to have that like cymbals pounce against it. So that it’s kind of an activity like riding a bicycle, like practicing tennis by hitting a wall, and catching the various reflex. Its participation. I like this experience of coming up with something different. That’s what I’m here for. In all the great wins, that’s what art is supposed to do I mean you’re supposed to change.” Sam Gilliam interview with Christian Lund at his studio in Washington D.C. in October 2018, Abstract Art is Political, Artist Sam Gilliam, Louisiana Channel, (8min:49sec – 10min:50sec).

This socially engaged project, Under the Light of a Canopy: Qualities of Opacity & Transparency, centers Sam Gilliam’s, Solar Canopy (1986), and motivated new explorations within my artistic practice. The goal of the project was to elicit curiosity by creating a mobile art-making station that supported unique and meaningful artistic exchanges. The mobile art-making station, Folded, Wrapped & Tied: A Bag for Unbinding, engaged the public with: 1) an interactive zine, 2) conversation and 3) a sculptural fabric collage activity.

The temporary installation of a pentagonal prism was made with fallen tree branches gathered from the abandoned Methodist Cemetary on campus. A space for collaboration emerged with the installed structure. Participating passersby added original fabric creations to the installation that explored what Gilliam spoke of as being “heavyweights” (opaque) and “lightweights” (translucent). The mobile station creates an engaging artistic experience for people of all ages and abilities.