Illumination: The Sculpture of James O. Clark
June 15 – August 31, 2022
For more than thirty years artist James O. Clark has been inspired by properties of light and the creation of experimental sculptures that uses it as a medium. Clark's innovative approach to light frequently employs non-traditional art materials such as balloons, neon, car parts, bubble and fog machines, water, helium, fluorescent lights, fiber-optic cables and electroluminescent wire, and live chickens to create his work. When speaking about the connection between luminosity and his art, Clark has observed that "In my creative adventure, I am captivated with the magic of light's dialogue with form. Light takes a mysterious journey when it's illuminating, composing, defining, reflecting, refracting, bending, teasing the volume and mass. Light has a poetic conversation with materials that creates a meaningful symbiotic relationship."
The twenty-three works on view at Herron were created between 1993 and 2000, and purposefully reflect the range and scope of Clark's sculptural light-based investigations. Experimentation is a hallmark of Clark's practice and can be seen in each of these objects, including an additional work, a print that was created with the help of a live chicken. A companion video of this avian, barnyard animal hunting and pecking at chicken feed scattered across a copper plate that was the source of the print, is also featured within the exhibition.
Jonathan D. Lippincott, in his catalogue essay that accompanies the exhibition notes that "Clark's works are illuminating in every sense of the word. His sculptures create environments; the light of each work interacts with whole space, the other sculptures, and with you, the viewer. As you're looking, you can become more attuned to your own experience of seeing. Observe the colors that appear when, for instance, green light meets a white wall, or a red shirt, or a blue knapsack; the colors that reflect off a nearby work, shining on metal or plastic or balloons. This act of discovery can only happen with time, and it's a physical as well as mental experience. As you move around the work, looking at it from different angles, the light is in constant interaction with every object and every surface around it. The sculptures await your participation."