prolonged exposure to oxygen....

Wendy Stefansson. Prolonged Exposure to Oxygen, Day 3, 6:18:04 pm.
Copper leaf on sandstone.  2009

Prolonged exposure to oxygen can change things - even people.

The works in this post are photographs of an ephemeral outdoor installation I created on my mother’s beach in Prince Edward Island. I applied copper leaf to parts of the sandstone rocks, following their natural contours; finding their low points, their concavities.

Over the course of three days, I photographed the coppered rocks as they changed with exposure to the elements: tides, wave action, salt, water, wind and air. The copper quickly lost its brilliance, but in place of light there emerged a rainbow of colours. Light disintegrated into colour,

finding perfection in its brokenness.

Time changes things, but it’s all good. It’s all god.

Wendy Stefansson. Prolonged Exposure to Oxygen, Day 3, 6:18:04 pm.
Copper leaf on sandstone. 2009

Wendy Stefansson.  Prolonged Exposure to Oxygen, Day 2, 7:10:39 pm.
Copper leaf on sandstone. 2009

Wendy Stefansson. Prolonged Exposure to Oxygen, Day 3, 6:18:11 pm.
Copper leaf on sandstone. 2009

on Andy Goldsworthy and the making of holes...

Andy Goldsworthy.
Japanese maple leaves stitched together to make a floating chain,
the next day it became a hole supported underneath by a woven briar ring.
Ouchiyama-Mura, Japan.  21-22 November 1987.

Every hole

is an entry point,

a cave,

the crater of a volcano,

a passageway back

to the place of perpetual beginnings.

(Creation followed by destruction followed by creation again

is a geologic truth.)

2013-04-20

Andy Goldsworthy.
Damp sand, hollowed out, soft red stone grond into a powder around each rim.
Compton Bay, Isle of Wight. June 1987.

Andy Goldsworthy.
Seven Holes, 1991.
Greenpeace, London UK.
Clay sourced from ground outside the building, and building debris.

Andy Goldsworthy.
Runnymede Sculpture Farm, Woodside, California.
Clay from the site. Clay works fired on site in a temporary kiln, 6-18 June 1994.

Andy Goldsworthy.
Runnymede clay; Scottish, Janpanese, Californian bracken and ferns held with thorns to the wall.
San Jose Museum of Art, California. February 1995.

For more on Andy Goldsworthy, see this. Or this.