“The Visible and Not: A Filtered Conversation between Light and Time”
by
Fiona Moes Pel

BFA with Distinction, University of the Fraser Valley, 2010
BEd, Simon Fraser University, 2012

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE
OF
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
in
VISUAL ARTS
EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2018

© Fiona Moes Pel, 2018

ABSTRACT
In this thesis, I explore material and conceptual conversations between the physical
and the mystical, the seen and unseen, the visible and not. I outline personal
embodied experiences with religious practices and within sacred spaces as a
grounding framework for my practice, which has eventually generated drawing
through glass. I am asking: how does the metaphysical manifest materially? This
research is explored through studio work and theoretical contexts in relation to the
phenomena of light as a spiritual experience as well as physical reality.
First, I outline the methodological origins of my early work in this program in relation
to explicit religious practices within the Protestant Christian tradition. This includes
the ABSORPTION of the perception of light as a profound spiritual symbol and
potent element of sacred spaces. Re-imagining and reinterpretation of stained glass
windows serves as a catalyzing visual vocabulary for this research. I then explain a
REFRACTION in my practice that occurs when material consideration is given to the
physical properties of light in relationship to glass. This mindfulness of the
interactional behaviors of these materials leads to a bending in my practice to focus
on researching more specifically the relationship between light and time.
Finally, DURATION emerges as a key component of studio research as the shifting of
light through time is evidenced in large scale graphite drawings. Ultimately, this text
documents my practice and research as a shifting and expanding exploration of the
sublime moment in connection with personal subjective spiritual experiences and
the multiplicity of time.

1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2

LIST OF FIGURES

3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

4

INTRODUCTION

5

ABSORPTION: LIGHT AND SPIRITUALITY
Initial Investigations - Rituals and Religious Practices

6

Light and Sacred Space Architecture

10

REFRACTION: LIGHT AND (IM)MATERIALITY
On Shape and Form - The Abstract and the Spiritual

21

Working with Light as Material

25

Attempting to Articulate the Sublime

27

DURATION: LIGHT AND TIME
The Multiplicity of Time

29

FUTURE PROJECTIONS AND CONCLUSION

35

WORKS CITED

37

WORKS CONSULTED

40

2

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1

Fiona Moes Pel / Call and Response / paper pulp, adhesive, LED lights /
36 x 54 inches / 2016

Figure 2

Wolfgang Laib/ Unlimited Ocean / 30,000 mounds of rice, 7 mounds of pollen /
installation / School of the Art Institute of Chicago / 2011

Figure 3

Fiona Moes Pel / Call and Response/ detail image / 2016

Figure 4

Fiona Moes Pel / Thin Places / glass, solder / variable dimensions, installation / 2017

Figure 5

Fiona Moes Pel / Thin Places / individual sculptures / 2017

Figure 6

James Turrell / Sky-Space / view looking up / Salzburg, Austria / 2006

Figure 7

James Turrell / Sky-Space / view of architectural structure and seating Salzburg,
Austria / 2006

Figure 8

Afruz Amighi / Mångata /steel, fiberglass mesh, chains, and LED lights / installation /
2016

Figure 9

James Turrell / Afrum I (White) / projected light / dimensions variable / installation /
1967

Figure 10

Fiona Moes Pel / studio view / repeated shape from rose window, cut, copper foiled

Figure 11

Fiona Moes Pel / work in process / three sculptures installed as one form /
Grunewald Guild Residency

Figure 12

Fiona Moes Pel / Filtered Conversations with Light / Glass, Solder / Installation at 2
times of day / July 2018

Figure 13

Olafur Eliasson / The New Planet / stainless steel, aluminium, coloured glass, paint
(black, yellow), halogen bulb / 95 x 95 x 200 cm / 2014

Figure 14

Fiona Moes Pel / Filtered Conversations with Time / 1 of 3 drawings / 36 x 100
inches / 2018

Figure 15

Fiona Moes Pel / Filtered Conversations with Time / series of drawings /36 x 100
inches each / 2018

Figure 16

Paul Chan / The 7 Lights/ video projection, table / dimensions variable / 2008

Figure 17

Fiona Moes Pel /Filtered Conversations with Time / details / 2018

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my supervisor Ingrid Koenig for her generosity of time, critical feedback and
encouragement throughout this process.
To Sadira Rodrigues, Simon Levin, and Kathleen Ritter for their insights, engagement,
and conversation.
To my classmates for their support, critiques, meals, and friendship.
To my family and friends for their unrelenting encouragement and curiosity about
my work.
And to Joel - the biggest thank you and acknowledgement. Without you, this
opportunity never would have happened at all. Thank you for all the big and little
things you have done to support me, encourage me, coach me, and feed me. You
have been amazingly patient and supportive, believing I could do this even when I
doubted.

4

INTRODUCTION
My practice is anchored in a curiosity around the embodiment of light and time as
these phenomena relate to facets of spirituality. I am curious about the relationship
between the physical and the mystical, the seen and unseen, the visible and not. In
other words, I am asking how the metaphysical can manifest materially.
My narrative is that of a female artist and a person of faith; therein lies the framework
for my research interests. Through material connections and interactions with light,
my practice takes up notions of traditional religious practices, aspects of sacred
space architecture, and the subjective multidimensional experience of time. The
foundation of my inquiries lies in the collision and collaboration of these spheres as
they relate to my own embodied knowledge. I attempt to revisit, reinterpret, and
reimagine my own spiritual experiences in relation to my studio practice and within
the broader context of contemporary art.
My research and studio work explore a range of strategies beginning from didactic
and explicit, to more recent works that employ increasingly abstract forms and
process-led making as thinking. My practice is rooted in drawing: the graphite line,
the cut line, the soldered line, the collapsing line, the overlapping line. For me, the
act of drawing is simultaneously a controlled act and a space for intuition to enter
into the process; a tool that allows for both structure and spontaneity. As my
research progressed, the layering of lines and increasing dimensionality of drawing
allowed for generative spaces for insights and nuance to occur that propelled my
work forward. Material explorations range from project to project and from two
dimensional to three dimensional forms yet the gesture of drawing remains
consistent in my practice. For example, the flat glass shapes which are drawn and
cut for Filtered Conversations with Light (Fig. 12) are joined together to create three
dimensional sculptures that comprise a larger installation. It is through these

5

transitions of states and forms that my work becomes a fertile loop and feeds back
into itself.
Throughout this program, my material and theoretical research has evolved and
expanded. My early work utilized explicit religious references and relied on specific
personal experiences. These early interests have grown wider to include a more
expansive vocabulary in relation to the spiritual and the metaphysical.

ABSORPTION: LIGHT AND SPIRITUALITY
Initial Investigations - Rituals and Religious Practices
“Neither art nor religion is merely the product of beliefs and dogma but is constituted
through practices” -Daniel Siedell1
Using cultural and religious practices as a grounding methodology is where my
practice began in this program. The simplicity of a repeated gesture, not merely as
habit but as an intentional transformational process is foundational to my work. This
is evidenced in Call and Response (2016) which is an example of early work where
the pairing of the residue of ritual collides with an intense belief in materiality.

1

Daniel Siedell is an art historian, critic and curator who has written and lectured on modern art and theology for
over 20 years. See Siedell, Daniel A. God in the gallery : a Christian embrace of modern art. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Academic, 2008. Print. P.75.

6

Fig. 1. Call and Response / paper pulp, adhesive, and LED lights / 36 x 54 “ / 2016

Thinking about ritual
and repetition of form, I arrive at the pew.
I turn to the post consumed pulp within my reach:
Cards, printed text, liturgical readings, a call and response.
These become fodder and form. I soak, I tear, I break down into
parts and the text becomes fractured, mostly unreadable.
I blend, I mash, I mix, and push into vessels. A bowl, a gap,
some openings left to let the light in. I do this again
and again and again. My fingers prune up
with the moisture. I read the text as I work;
half of the time my mind fills in the blanks
with phrases now ingrained
in my memory.

Call and Response is an installation that consists of multiple bowl forms created with
paper pulp made from liturgical cards collected from a church. The bowl forms are
created through a repetitive and labor intensive process of using molds. Liturgy is a
7

public form of worship which is constituted through various communal practices
within the context of a religious community. The practice of liturgy is about
becoming, about transformation; it is about articulating the rhythms of consolation
(presence) and desolation (absence) of the Divine. Drawing upon my experience, this
particular liturgy is a spoken call and response between the individual and the
community. Liturgy is rooted in the tradition of ancient Christian spiritual disciplines;
they are embodied practices where one becomes transformed through the
repetition. Through Call and Response, I am attempting to reinterpret and reimagine
the impact of liturgical rituals on the individual over an extended period of time; I am
asking how one is shaped and transformed through these practices.
The relationship between art and ritual is a landscape filled with artists from a range
of spiritual beliefs2. Wolfgang Laib is one such artist who occupies this space. Laib’s
work is built on meditative, repetitive actions and his intention to “maximize the
symbolic associations” of the materials he uses3. Laib uses nontraditional materials
such as bee pollen and milk bone to create immense ephemeral installations that
exhibit repetition, meditation, and contemplation both in process and in product. Yet
Laib’s practice does not emerge out of this development of form, it is “a pursuit of
simplicity as a means of order, it relates to cultural practices and religions around the
world: Japanese Zen Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, the teachings of St.Francis of
Assisi, American Quakerism”4. This simple meditative process can been seen in
Laib’s Unlimited Ocean (Fig.2) installation of rice and pollen at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago.

2

“Ritual” further defined as: a set of prescribed, established or ceremonial acts or features collectively, as in
religious services. See “Ritual.” Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, 2018, www.dictionary.com/browse/ritual.
3
Gamwell, Lynn. Exploring the Invisible: art, science, and the spiritual. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press,
2002. Print. p. 295
4
Ottmann, Klaus, “The Solid and the Fluid: Perceiving Laib,” in Wolfgang Laib: a Retrospective. American Federation
of Arts, Ostfildern/Ruit, Germany: Hatje, 2000. Print. p. 20

8

Fig. 2. Unlimited Ocean / 30,000 mounds of rice, 7 mounds of pollen / installation
Wolfgang Laib / School of the Art Institute of Chicago / 2011

Unlimited Ocean exhibits Laib’s sensorial and symbolic use of everyday materials
and is one of the largest installations Laib has created. The repeated gesture of
mounding resulted in a grid of 30,000 piles of rice and 7 piles of pollen which evoke
a sense of the transformation of ritual over time.
In a parallel manner, Call and Response (Fig.1) plays with collected material and a
repeated gesture which can be seen in the bowl forms, but it employs a more
explicit reference to its source material as words are still somewhat visible in the final
installation. This specific iteration of Call and Response was part of a series of
experiments exploring different installation spaces, including the wooden floor of a
place of worship as well as on a stained glass church window. I began to consider
how specific kinds of materials and the type of light would alter the interpretation.

9

Fig. 3. Call and Response / detail / 2016

After I created several configurations of Call and Response, further reflection of these
works made me aware that my main medium is not actually paper but rather light. I
see now that my gaze is drawn to materials because they perform a relationship to
light, as they refract, filter, cast into and alter a space. This was a pivotal point in my
research and began to reframe how I approach my practice. I was also struck by the
generous spaciousness this insight produced in my work moving forward.

Light and Sacred Space Architecture
“In terms of the spiritual, there are very few religious or spiritual experiences that people
don’t use the vocabulary of light to describe” - James Turrell5
5

King, Elaine A. “Into The Light A Conversation with James Turrell.” Sculpture, vol. 21, no. 9, Nov. 2002,

10

The visible interwoven with the invisible, the tension and gap between the seen and
the unseen is a central concern in my practice. However, how I have approached this
concern has shifted over the course of this program from explicit didactic materials
and references to a more speculative approach that allows the physical phenomena
of light itself to lead the work. This has required a letting go of definitive outcomes
and opening up space for a materially responsive process. This change can been
seen emerging in the work Thin Places (Fig.4) and expanded upon and increasingly
embraced in my thesis project work consisting of Filtered Conversations with Light
(Fig.12) and Filtered Conversations with Time (Fig.14).
This shift in my practice instigated a material shift to working with glass. I was drawn
towards glass as a material with a rich physical and historical relationship to light. I
use ‘physical’ as a term to describe the relationship of the interactional physics
between light and glass. I use ‘historical’ relationships to allude to past arenas of
architectural partnerships between light and glass on an immense scale, specifically
within the context of Gothic cathedrals. Thin Places (Fig.4) is my first body of work
that begins to explore ideas of Gothic architecture and cathedral light through
referencing and reworking the process and materials of stained glass windows. The
“thin place” is a term from Celtic Spirituality, which refers to locales where the
distance between heaven and earth diminishes, and one is able to catch glimpses of
the divine, or the transcendent6. I see this idea of the thin place as a way to describe
the experience or definition of what might be considered a sacred space.
Thin Places is a series of eight sculptures made of clear and coloured glass that have
been soldered into three dimensional forms and installed in a row, slightly higher
than traditional gallery viewing height. With this work I am exploring the form of
stained glass found in church windows, allowing it to collapse, fold, complicate, and
reinvent. Through the installation of the work I am attempting to evoke a slight tilt of
6

See Weiner, Eric. “Where Heaven and Earth Come Closer”. New York Times. Web. 9 March 2012.

11

the head of the viewer upward, recalling the experience of scale from my original
architectural references.

Fig.4. Thin Places / glass, solder / variable dimensions, installation view / 2017

Clear glass,
coloured glass
coming together
and folding in
on themselves.
I begin to
cut and snap,
score and slice,
tape and solder.
A whole new way
of making emerges7.
7

Previous to this moment, I had no experience creating with stained glass techniques and thus embarked on
learning a whole new way of making. In order to avoid the potentially toxic traditional method of using lead
came, I employ the comparatively more contemporary technique of copper foiling as a conductive adhesive.
Objectively not new, stained glass methods date back to as early as the 7th century AD and gained immense
popularity and production during the mid 12th century with Abbot Suger of Saint Denis. See Duby, Georges. The
Age of the Cathedrals : Art and Society, 980-1420.

12

Material research
takes precedence and
I seek out experts and tutorials.
Hours spent listening
and watching.
Forms
in my mind take shape
and then break. Again and again.
My hands begin to learn new movements,
new grasps, new structural strategies emerge.
Repetition continues to play a key role;
multiple sculptures are created and
a collection forms.
Experiments rely on
variations in size,
changes in colour,
variables of glass.
I make as a way to
work through understanding8.
Enough structure to be a catalyst,
enough intuition to let the work
come into existence freely9.
A teeter-totter dialectic
emerges between
inside and out,
absence and
presence,
void and form.

8

In these works, I identify with artist, researcher and writer Derek Whitehead’s idea of poiesis, where creative will
and making as thinking are central. In this vein, I acknowledge that my methodology falls under research in the
arts, where my artistic practice itself is essential to my research and I am seeking “to articulate some of this
embodied knowledge throughout the creative process and in the art object”. See Borgdorff, Henk. “The Debate
on Research in the Arts,” p 7.
9

I choose to define ‘intuition’ as a space for an attitude of response to the material in the creative process. I
derive this definition from artist Ann Hamilton, ““A large part of the process is trying to create a space or attitude
of response. I don’t try fill it in too fast… The need to know, or the need for a work to be something, has to be
suspended…” See Wallach, Amei. "A Conversation with Ann Hamilton in Ohio." American Art, Print. Vol. 22, No. 1,
Spring 2008, pp. 60.

13

Fig.5. Thin Places / glass, solder / 6 of 8 individual sculptures / 2017

Thin Places was installed in the Concourse gallery for our Interim exhibition in July
2017. During certain windows of time, primarily early evening, the natural light in the
exhibition space dramatically illuminated and transformed each piece. The shadows
became as visually dominant as the sculptures themselves, creating vibrant fields of
colours on the wall. These moments became important considerations for my
practice as I began focusing my research more specifically on the relationship
between light and time. I began to pay attention both to the types of installation
spaces as well as the windows of time that were opportune moments to view the
work.

14

In a career spanning over 50 years, James Turrell is an artist who devotes his life to
light travelling through space. Turrell is a master of harnessing, framing, presenting
light through his art on a massive scale. Working since the 1960s, he has created an
expansive body of work that plays with our perception and experience with light. He
says, “My interest in light and space came about the way it does for most artists Friedrich, Vermeer, Turner, Constable, Rembrandt, Seurat, the Impressionists.
Perception and light have always been the basic things.”10
Turrell acknowledges his Quaker childhood being formative in shaping his views on
light and space. His experiences in Meeting houses from an early age were framed
by his grandmother who told him to “go inside to meet the light”11. Although meant
figuratively, Turrell self-admittedly took this literally as well and has spent the
duration of his art practice exploring this notion. The influence of Quaker practices
and experiences in Turrell’s work is inferred and evoked subtly but is undeniably
present. Academic researcher Helen Meads unpacks this explicitly in her
presentation, “The Quaker Meaning of Light and James Turrell's work”. She points
towards the echoes of Quaker practices in the way Turrell’s work gathers people in
silence and stillness akin to the posture of Friends gathered in Meetings. Meads
makes further parallels in the shape of the space and architecture of Turrell’s
Skyspaces which play off of Quaker Meeting rooms which are designed around
simplicity and the ability for viewers to sit in a circle and face another12.

10

Kimmelman, Michael. “Inside a Lifelong Dream of Desert Light.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8
Apr. 2001
11
Art21. “‘Live Oak Friends Meeting House.’” Art21, 2001,
12
Meads, Helen. “The Quaker Meaning of Light (and James Turrell's Work).” Go Inside to Meet the Light, 2015,
p.5-6

15

Left: Fig.6. Sky-Space / view looking up / James Turrell / Salzburg, Austria / 2006
Right: Fig.7. Sky-Space / view of architectural structure and seating / James Turrell / Salzburg, Austria
/ 2006

Turrell creates spaces where we can gather, places where we can be together. The
effect of dwelling within specific religious architecture over a long period of time
influences the way one’s body perceives and responds to space and light. In this
manner, my own childhood being raised in the Protestant Christian church has
shaped the way I understand and perceive light. In my practice, I draw upon similar
experiences and employ architectural facets of places of worship as a framework
and tool for unpacking my own aesthetic relationship to the church. My research has
specifically focused on the historical and contemporary designs of windows in
places of worship. This focus on windows primarily is rooted in the visual vocabulary
of stained glass windows in sacred spaces.
Stained glass windows, in the Protestant tradition, tend to be simpler and less ornate
than in the Catholic church. This contrast is rooted in the division of the Catholic
Church with the Protestant Reformation in 1517 led by Martin Luther. Differences of
opinions related to theological aesthetics was a contributing element in this schism.

16

My experiences in church buildings has changed and varied over time. In my
adolescent years, I attended a church that looked more like a community center
than a Gothic cathedral. Light was filtered through clear glass into the gathering
space; mottled coloured glass was absent and light entered the sanctuary unfiltered.
Yet, my experience of light in this place of worship still evoked sublime or
transcendence moments. The natural light played off the angles of the building
itself; the shifting of time and the colour of natural light became more visible. In
slight contrast, I presently spend Sundays in a space that contains simple stained
glass windows which employ only two different geometric shapes and three muted
tones of yellow, green, and frost. It is in the folding of all of these experiences and
perceptions where my art practice pulls from.
The effect of light within sacred architecture transforms each space in relation to
multiple contributing factors including building design, immense scale, time of day,
geographical location, and ritualistic practices such as lighting candles. Architect
Paul Goldberger names the role light plays in the inherent paradox of designing and
building sacred spaces, “Space is intuitively less rational, and it is obviously less
material. No one ever talks of sacred structure. We may study Gothic cathedrals as
works of structure, but when we talk of them in sacred terms, we talk about things
far less tangible—we talk of space, and light.”13 The element of light in places of
worship is present as a symbolic reference but also a physical presence that
transforms space, embodies ephemerality and ineffability, and guides postures
outward and upward. Goldberger again, “The genius of the Gothic is the way its
structure exists to bring us to a place that, for all intents and purposes, defies the
very essence of structure. The great cathedrals celebrate God by becoming
ephemeral, light, rising toward heaven in a way that makes us feel awe”14.

13

Goldberger, Paul. Architecture, Sacred Space and the Challenge of the Modern. Chautauqua Institution, 12 Aug.
2010, Accessed April 21, 2018
14

Ibid.

17

Thin Places is an experiment that plays with these architectural structures through a
contemporary and personal reinterpretation. The immense scale employed by
artists Laib and Turrell and also experienced in sacred architecture, functions to
articulate that which is larger than oneself. My reinterpretation of these architectural
structures pulls and translates those scales into my hands, into a process where
scale becomes folded in upon itself.
Afruz Amighi is another artist explicitly working with the way light and religion
operate together in buildings and she translates these ideas into sculptures. Her
architectural forms come together to create installations where lighting and shadow
play key roles in activating the work. In Amigi’s Mångata (Fig.8) installation, her
sculptures echo architectural facets found in Islamic mosques and the intentional
low lighting evokes the feeling of a shrine. The suspended metal works cast
shadows throughout the space, increasing the overall presence of the configuration.

Fig.8. Mångata /steel, fiberglass mesh, chains, and LED lights / installation / Afruz Amighi / 2016

18

Amighi draws heavily on her own embodied experience in places of worship and
these experiences form the foundation of her practice. She says,
“ ‘The two main influences in my work are Islamic art and architecture and
Gothic art and architecture…. I think the Gothic comes from having travelled
and seen a lot of cathedrals at a very young age. I remember feeling very
drawn to the drama of Catholicism and especially churches. I love the idea of
going inside these cathedrals; there’s the smell of the incense and there’s the
robes that the priest wears. It’s so theatrical—like a soap opera’. In terms of
Islamic architecture, it is the sense of symmetry and beauty in the proportions
used that influence her the most. ‘There’s a sense of verticality,” says Amighi.
“So my work is very tall and slender for that reason.’”15
From description of her influences, Amighi is responding to multiple facets of her
experiences within sacred architecture. The sensory experiences of religious
buildings imbeds itself into one’s body, shaping and prodding the way one perceives
smell, touch, and sight in connection to the spiritual. My own embodied experience
lacks the aroma of incense and the hardness of pews for the most part and, as such,
my eyes became fixated on the light moving through the space.
This perception of light is the very notion that aforementioned artist James Turrell
plays with, toying with what we think we see, how we experience light, and how we
make understandings based on subjective perceptions. An early example of this can
be seen in his work Afrum I (White) (Fig.9) which plays off of projected light in a
corner of the gallery which reads akin to a cube shape to the viewer.
Curator Lynn M. Herbert names this, “Turrell’s work enables us to see through those
doors of perception; light enables him to engage with perception as a medium.”16.
French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty speaks to this in his seminal text The
Phenomenology of Perception. He emphasizes the body as the site for primary
knowledge and theorizes the inseparability of embodied ontology and its

15

Proctor, Rebecca Anne. “Afruz Amighi: Utopian Towers.” Harper's Bazaar: Arabia, 22 June 2016
Herbert, Lynn M. “Spirit and Light and the Immensity Within.” The Sublime, edited by Simon Morley,
Whitechapel Gallery, 2010, pp. 96–101. Documents of Contemporary Art. p. 97
16

19

Fig.9. Afrum I (White) / projected light / dimensions variable / installation / James Turrell / 1967

relationship with one’s perception of the world. He writes, “... I am conscious of the
world through the medium of my body.”17 Contrary to Cartesian dualism of mind and
body, personal situated perspective, a view from the body, shapes our perceptions
and relationships with our consciousness of the world. My body has absorbed and
filtered light primarily as a physical manifestation of spiritual experiences. Ponty calls
out this specific vista, “Is not to see always to see from somewhere?”18 In this manner,
I acknowledge my perception of light shifts between both a spiritual concept
embedded with transcendent metaphors but also a phenomenological physical
experience.

17

Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.
(p.95).
18
Ibid. p.77

20

REFRACTION: LIGHT AND (IM)MATERIALITY
On Shape and Form - The Abstract and the Spiritual
“Art is the path to being spiritual” - Piet Mondrian
My methodological shift to the more speculative coincided with a change in visual
language in my practice from somewhat representational to the more abstract.
Simplified geometric shapes which reference stained glass windows as a typology
became a generative vehicle in my work, specifically in Filtered Conversations with
Light (2018).

Left : Fig.10. studio view / repeated shape from rose window, cut and copper foiled
Right : Fig.11. work in process / three sculptures installed as one form / Grunewald Guild Residency

The architectural facets of
the rose window and it’s repeated sharded
shape draws me in. I begin to work with the one shape.
I now prepare glass with half-conscious thoughts
And fully (gloved) aware hands.
21

Score, cut, snap, tape, repeat.
A generative system continues
to build and strengthen19.
Solder steam and molten metal
create connections that shift
with each piece.
Each work
resembling the former
and the future, yet
maintaining its own
particular insides
and out.
Pieces
flatten,
fold,
collapse,
intertwine as the
network multiplies.
Sculptures become
interchangeable and
moveable modules and
merge into one
installation.
Filtered Conversations with Light is comprised of an expanding collection of glass
sculptures. Individual sculptures vary in size and overall form. Each soldered
sculpture is made from glass shapes that are different scales of the same simplified
shard shape found in the circular rose window. In Filtered Conversations with Light,
coloured glass is left behind in an attempt to create space for other conversions
beyond stained glass such as the sublime experience in the natural landscape,
ephemerality, the phenomena of light, the passing of time. Slippage between white
and clear and background began to emerge as an element of the work. Formal

19

My creative process is developing as a generative system with specific constraints in which there is a balance
of rules and structure (i.e. particular rose window shape used in glass forms) and intuition-led making (i.e. the way
the pieces come together to form a sculpture). Artist, researcher, and writer Philip Galanter classifies this “use of
systems... as a key element in generative art.” He goes on to define generative art as a method of making “where
potentially multiple results can be produced by using some kind of generating system… where the artist cedes
partial or total control to that system”. In this light, I see my making as a hands-on practice in which “complex
systems exhibit a mix of order and disorder.” See “Galanter, Philip. “What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as
a Context for Art Theory.”

22

qualities of shape and line came to the forefront in the advent of ‘colourlessness’
and I began to see the work as three dimensional drawing. The overall installation of
the work connected sculptures together to evoke a sense of both macroscopic and
microscopic forms such as atomic structures, crystals, ice fractals, waterfalls,
mountain tops, once again folding together multiple notions of scale. In relation to
these forms, the work attempts to expand the idea of the sacred space outside the
specificity of a religious building to include and explore subtle references to the
natural landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

Fig.12. Filtered Conversations with Light / Glass, Solder / Installation view at 2 times of day / July 2018

Filtered Conversations with Light came together as a fluid installation for the
graduation thesis exhibition in July 2018. The modules were suspended, grounded,

23

and connected with one another. The pieces were installed for the maximum
interaction with available natural light and the architecture of the exhibition space.
Filtered Conversations with Light led my research into geometric abstraction and to
modernist painter Piet Mondrian. I discovered a kinship with Mondrian’s practice. Like
my own history, his upbringing in a Dutch Reformed Protestant home, shaped by
ideas the theologian Abraham Kuyper, likely influenced his life long pursuit of the
relationship between art and the spiritual20. Beginning as a highly representational
landscape painter, Mondrian’s work began to shift into abstraction and geometric
forms as he sought after an extreme formal purity that embodied his spiritual belief
in a harmonious cosmos21. Like other artists of his time, these later spiritual views
were shaped by the popular occultist and syncretic doctrine of Theosophy which
held (among other beliefs) that humankind evolved from physical to spiritual states
in a series of stages that could be evoked by geometric forms22.
Mixed into this pursuit of formal purity, Mondrian held onto his motto, “each element
is determined by its contrary” which manifested itself in his work not as a translation
of the visible world into a geometric pattern but rather a transcoding which enacted
in his work the laws of the dialectics that govern the world, visible or not23. Aside
from some similar formal aesthetic qualities, it is this dialectic of the visible and not
that parallels my own practice and continues forward in my work. Light as a medium
lends itself as a physical manifestation of the visible while also imbuing its own
natural material properties which are invisible to the human eye.

20

Further: “Rooted in a strict puritan tradition of Dutch Calvinism and inspired by his theosophical beliefs, he
continually strove for purity during his long career, a purity best explained by the double meaning of the Dutch
word schoon, which means both ‘clean’ and ‘beautiful.’” See Jaffé, Hans L.C. “Piet Mondrian.” Encyclopædia
Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 28 Feb. 2018
21
Ibid. Further: the concept of a harmonious cosmos is contextual to Mondrian’s time in the modernist era and is a
term used by the author to articulate Mondrian’s exploration of his ideas.
22
Foster, Hal, et al. Art since 1900 : modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism. New York, N.Y: Thames & Hudson,
2007. Print. p 119)
23
Ibid. pg. 149

24

Working with Light as Material
“Light has an evident, functional and aesthetic impact on our lives”. - Olafur Eliasson
Light is the essential material for the existence of life; without light, nothing is visible
or lives. We soak in light as nourishment for our bodies as vitamin D, we rely on light
to make all of life viable. The investigation of the properties of light through a
subjective spiritual and historical lens has become the main focus of my graduate
thesis project: light as a substance that occupies two states as both a wave and
particle; light as a fleeting yet vital life giving substance; light and its relationship to
glass. In essence, my practice has refracted to a more intensely physical
consideration of light in regards to the natural science and interactional physics
between light and glass.

Fig.13. The New Planet / stainless steel, aluminium, coloured glass, paint (black, yellow), halogen bulb
/ 95 x 95 x 200 cm / Olafur Eliasson / 2014

Olafur Eliasson is an artist who approaches light in this manner, with a lens of optical
theory paired with the sensory effects of light. His works utilize spherical forms that
25

play with behaviours of light such a refraction and radiation. The basis of these
interactions is founded in the geometrical properties of these aforementioned
behaviours. Eliasson claims that both “the physical object in the space and… the way
the light and the shadows and the colors claim and create space together. They
perform architecture, you might say”24. As seen in his work The New Planet (Fig.13),
Eliasson’s works hinge on interaction of a solid sculpture with the ephemerality of
light and resulting shadows. The materials in The New Planet interact with the light of
the halogen bulb and this interaction allows the work to expand and refract as
projections of coloured pattern and shadow onto the walls and floor of the exhibition
space.
Glass as a material in relationship with light works as a filter that highlights physical
evidence of light. Glass is neither a liquid nor a solid. It is an amorphous solid—a
state somewhere between those two states of matter, or also known as an
extremely slow moving liquid but so slow that our typical human perception cannot
see this action. The movement of the glass molecules slows as temperature cools,
but they never lock into crystal patterns. Instead, they jumble up and gradually
become glassier, or more viscous...”25 This space in flux between these two states of
solid and liquid is a place of interest for my practice both materially and
conceptually.

Further, the relationship of glass bending and refracting light is another important
consideration in my work. In a vacuum, lights travels at a speed of 299,792.458 km
per second, also known as the constant, c. When light passes through glass, the
wavelengths are reduced and the glass slows down the speed of light to

24

Azzarello, Nina. “Interview with Artist Olafur Eliasson.” Designboom | Architecture & Design Magazine, 19 Oct.
2016
25
Weeks, Eric. “Is Glass A Solid Or An Extremely Slow Moving Liquid?” ScienceDaily, Emory University, 13 Aug.
2007

26

approximately 200,000 kilometers per second26. In Filtered Conversations with Light,
light passes through each glass form causing it to slow down ever so slightly and
then refracts it as evidenced by the shadows in the installation space. This slowing of
light, these interactions between light and glass occur at a time scale beyond
comprehension of the pace of the human body. As my research progressed into the
physical properties of my materials, it led me to a deeper consideration of the
perception of time. The relationships between the fragility of glass, the ephemerality
of light, and the fleeting subjective experience of time is further explored in my work
Filtered Conversations with Time (2018).

Attempting to Articulate the Sublime
““Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the
presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure
but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt”

Immanuel Kant27

The sublime is one way to attempt to articulate such moments of mute encounter
with all that exceeds our comprehension28. The definition of what the sublime is and
can be has changed over time. Simon Morley, editor of the anthology The Sublime,
loosely defines the sublime experience as “fundamentally transformative, about the
relationship between disorder and order, and the disruption of the stable
coordinates of time and space. Something rushes in and we are profoundly
altered.”29 This something has been dissected and debated since the ancient Greek
philosopher Longinus to Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Schiller.
Many other writers and thinkers have tackled the topic of the sublime
26

Parry-Hill, Matthew, and Michael W. Davidson. “Speed of Light in Transparent Materials.”Molecular Expressions
Microscopy Primer: Physics of Light and Color - Speed of Light in Transparent Materials: Interactive Java Tutorial,
Florida State University, 13 Nov. 2015
27
Kant, Immanuel, Werner S. Pluhar, and Patricia Kitcher. Critique of pure reason. Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett Pub.
Co, 1996. Print.
28
Morley, Simon. The Sublime. London Cambridge, Mass: Whitechapel Gallery MIT Press, 2010. Print. p.12
29
Ibid.

27

contemporaneously yet Morley argues that residual thoughts of these four
philosophers’ definitions, broadly speaking, can be identified within contemporary
art and theory30.
The sublime, for Longinus, was rooted as a literary device, as rhetoric, to describe
the great and the awe inspiring, and was meant to describe lofty thought and the
feeling of being overwhelmed31. Irish theorist Edmund Burke took the sublime into
the realm of aesthetics and categorized it as an experience of shock and awe,
triggering a destabilizing force32. His definition specifically steered the sublime into
relationship with experiences in nature which trigger feelings of vastness in
connection with ideas of the beautiful but also terror.33 For Immanuel Kant, the
notion of the sublime was about “revealing a reality that is fundamentally
indeterminate, undecidable, and unpresentable34”. Lastly, Schiller’s interpretation
builds on Kant’s ideas of the sublime and places it in the realm of an ecstatic
experience35.
Etymologically, the word sublime comes from the Latin sublimis which is derived
from sub meaning ‘up to’ and limen as ‘the threshold’ or ‘a boundary’. In the Middle
Ages sublimis morphed into a verb sublimare which meant ‘to elevate’ and was
commonly used by alchemists to describe their purification process of substances36.
In relation to my own practice, the definition of sublime continues to evolve.
Beginning as a reference to religiosity and transcendent moments, it has shifted to
include broader experiences within the natural world specifically with the
phenomena of light and, more recently, the experience of the multiplicity of time.
30

Ibid. p.19
Claviez, Thomas. “A Short History of the Sublime: From Longinus via Burke, Kant, Levinas and Lyotard to
Rancière.” Academia.edu, University of Bern, p.2
32
Morley, Simon. The Sublime. p.19
33
Burke, Edmund, and Adam Phillips. A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and
beautiful. Oxford England New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Print.
34
Ibid.
35
Moland, Lydia L. “Friedrich Schiller.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 21 Apr. 2017,
plato.stanford.edu/entries/schiller/. See Sec. 2.4 The Pathetic, The Sublime, and the Tragic.
36
Morley, Simon. The Sublime. p.14
31

28

DURATION: LIGHT AND TIME
The Multiplicity of Time
“Is there anything we know more intimately than the fleetingness of time, the transience
of each and every moment? -Rebecca Goldstein37
Increasing material mindfulness and observation of my work Filtered Conversations
with Light instigated studio explorations of mapping, tracing, and recording the path
of light and resulting shadows in my studio space. These marks grew into Filtered
Conversations with Time (Fig.14) which is a series of large scale graphite drawings
that record and map the shadows of the sculptures. This experience of working with
the movement of light over time became a confrontation with the sublime; I became
increasingly aware of the ineffability of recording these moments. The impossibility
of this act continued to expand, enlarging these ongoing drawings beyond the scale
of my body. Sculptures in Filtered Conversations with Light began to function as tools
for measuring time; individualized glass clocks that each filter a specific recording of
the path of light. I see them interchangeably as tools and as works of art. These two
bodies of work feed into one another in a generative loop, propelling each other
forward. In its fleeting and flux, light led me to time and to considering the
conversations shared between the two.

Over time,
light passes through
the glass forms and
casts shadows onto my paper.
I trace and record and measure.
Time passes and I draw; light draws as I trace.
Intervals become visible and overlap.
Layers of time start to suggest movement,
I move, the drawing moves.
37

Goldstein, Rebecca. Incompleteness : the proof and paradox of Kurt Gödel. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Print.
p.254

29

Always one step behind,
I attempt to capture just enough
but it is never all of it.
My relationship to time
becomes strained, estranged38.
I focus deep attention to
the shifting shadows
and time shifts.
No longer chasing
after consistent
chronos intervals,
I surrender
to the moment39 .
I record what I can
when I see it,
when it seems like
the opportune time40.
As I drew, I became deeply aware of this
inextricable relationship between light and time.
As time passed, light moved, and my body was
required to adjust, a game of endless chasing.
The initial intervals of time blended together as
incremental transitions of light became
impossible to wholly capture. Time, as a
chronological sequence, faded as
Fig.14. Filtered Conversations with Time/ 1 of 3 drawings / graphite on paper / 36 x 100 inches / 2018

38

As an expanding subjective multifaceted relationship to time further defined as “a physical dimension, a
dynamic system, a phenomenal feature of experience and a form of measurement.” See Brettkelly-Chalmers,
Kate. “Beyond the Clock: The Aesthetics of Time in Contemporary Art.” p.7
39

Chronos - The ancient greeks had two words for ‘time’. Chronos referred to the chronological time, sequential
time, time that was objectively measurable and quantitative.
40

Kairos - the ancient greek word for time which referred to qualitative time or meaning the right, critical, or
opportune moment.

30

the presentness required in the moment of the creative process became fully
demanding. This contemplation of my subjective experience of time became
confounded and complicated by continuing to consider other timescales beyond
the ticking clock.

Fig.15. Filtered Conversations with Time / series of graphite drawings / 36 x 100 inches each / 2018

Academic Kate Brettkelly-Chalmers researches this conflation of the multiplicity of
time in her doctorate text “Beyond the Clock: The Aesthetics of Time in
Contemporary Art.” She argues for the diversities of time explored and questioned in
contemporary art “as a physical dimension, a dynamic system, a phenomenological
feature of experience, and a form of measurement.”41. Wrestling with a layered
41

BrettKelly-Chalmers, Kelly. “Beyond the Clock: The Aesthetics of Time in Contemporary Art.”University of
Auckland Research Repository, University of Auckland, ResearchSpace, 2016. p.7

31

understanding of time is not a new notion. St. Augustine of Hippo articulated his
pondering of time in 398 AD, writing on time and eternity and asking, “What is time?
Who can explain this easily and briefly? Who can comprehend this even in thought,
so as to articulate the answer in words?”42
Asking these questions of time is artist Paul Chan in his work The 7 Lights (Fig.16)
which is a series of large scale projections in which paper silhouette forms are
animated to depict Chan’s interpretation of the Biblical seven days of creation.

Fig.16. The 7 Lights/ video projection, table / dimensions variable / Paul Chan / 2008

Paul Chan, in relation to this work, responded to a request of analysis by saying:
“For me, The 7 Lights represents a testing of what this ‘new’ time might look
like and feel like. People have told me how 1st Light makes them feel
suspended in a ‘time’ that both is and isn’t the exhibition… I think that this
feeling comes from...making time-based works whose ‘time’ doesn’t draw
from the well of chronos. Rather kairos is its source.”43

42

Hippo, Augustine of. “Time And Eternity // 397-8 AD.” Time, edited by Amelia Groom, Whitechapel Gallery,
2013, pp. 50–51. Documents of Contemporary Art. p.50
43
Birnbaum, Daniel. “Paul Chan’s The 7 Lights //2007” Time, edited by Amelia Groom, Whitechapel Gallery, 2013,
pp. 50–51. Documents of Contemporary Art. p.50 . P. 56

32

In drawing attention to kairos time, Chan is asking us to consider time outside of a
linear horizontal chronos time orientation. In this same referenced text, author Daniel
Birnbaum expands on this notion of chronos versus kairos. He suggests that taking
kairological time as a beginning point radically shifts the idea of understanding time
as epistemological to understanding time based on a consideration of ethical time.44
Another way to name kairos time is extrapolated by philosopher Giorgio Agamben
when he connects kairos time with messianic time in his essay The Time that
Remains. Agamben labels chronos time as secular time which spans from the
creation of the world to the end of time whereas he places kairos time as time which
‘contracts itself and begins to end’45. In this light, kairos time constricts and collapses
into itself, shattering its horizontal path and creating the possibility of an upwards
vertical movement and inwards to a subjective potentially ethical reorientation.
A more poetic definition of chronos and kairos is offered by critically acclaimed writer
and poet Madeleine L’Engle when she puts it this way:
“Chronology, the time which changes things, makes them grow older, wears
them out, and manages to dispose of them, chronologically, forever. Thank
God there is kairos too: again the Greeks were wiser than we are. They had
two words for time: chronos and kairos. Kairos is not measurable. Kairos is
ontological. In kairos we are, we are fully in isness, not negatively, as Sartre
saw the isness of the oak tree, but fully, wholly, positively. Kairos can
sometimes enter, penetrate, break through chronos: the child at play, the
painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata are in kairos. The saint in
prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for
her newborn baby are in kairos.”46
The poetic experience of time is what I attempt to capture in Filtered Conversations
with Time. The process of creation is evidenced through the tracing of the passing
shadows in chronos time but these marks are complicated by their incompleteness
and gaps as well as the necessity of my own relationship and presentness in the
process. I was not able to fully capture the whole shadow in each moment and
44

Ibid. p.58
Ibid. p.59
46
See L’Engle, Madeleine. A Circle of Quiet. New York, NY: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc, 2016. Print.
45

33

intuitively chose which marks to record in relation to previous tracings, previous time
records. Thus, as I continued to draw, a system of rhythmic notation developed and
began to become my main framework for making.

Fig.17. Filtered Conversations with Time / details / graphite on paper / 2018

34

CONCLUSION and FUTURE PROJECTIONS
“Time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with
amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon the mind of man. The mind of
man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it
lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred
times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the
timepiece of the mind by one second.”- Virginia Woolf47
This most recent interest in poetic notations of time has further potential to explore
more intentional systematic methods of mark making. The drawings that make up
Filtered Conversations with Time map and layer multiple ways of time notation,
relying on both a heavily structured system of rules but also allows for spontaneous
marks to emerge and respond in process. This generative system of drawing echoes
the process of making I utilized for Filtered Conversations with Light but employs it in
a manner that is more accessible and fertile for future research.
Another possible avenue for further exploration and expansion in these works is the
addition of a participatory element or community engagement. Future iterations of
drawings could include an invitation for a viewer or gatherings of viewers to draw
and trace the shadows, working together with me. In this manner, the scale of the
mapping would allow for potentially immense drawings that could expand the
project beyond the pace and scale of my own body and into the realm of the
massive. The open endedness of this kind of process allows for me to work in a way
that encourages a loosening of control over materials and definitive outcomes. The
end result, or infinitely ongoing result if it continues, is beyond calculation and out of
my reach. I also anticipate this would create a stronger physical response and
interaction for the viewer with my work and with their experience of the notion of
time as a multidimensional, subjective, and expansive phenomena.

47

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando; a biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. Print.

35

A parallel idea and strategy for creating more space and less control over my
process is to open up my drawing practice to include ‘failed moments’, times where
the natural light disappears. It would be fruitful to investigate how might I record
these ‘cloudy’ periods: would there be growing space or lapses of line? Would my
pencil begin to wander in boredom or tap in frustration? Would I respect these
regions or draw overtop at a later time?
I am drawn to continue these time and light based graphite drawings as a continued
methodological interest in the sublime moment through exploring diverse and
dynamic perceptions of time. This is the path forward I am most interested as a
potentially rich framing for my studio practice and research beyond this program. I
am curious about expanding these conversations beyond drawing my own
sculptures and installations into possible collaborations with other people, objects,
and phenomena that exist outside my studio walls. In doing this, I am still asking
about the material translations and interpretations of the metaphysical, yet
continuing to search for avenues and poetic gestures to attempt to articulate that
which is larger than myself.

36

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