Lightness, October 2011
Curated by Amanda Manitach and Serrah Russell

Lightness features local artists working (at least for one night) in digital video, analog projection, light installation and other illuminating mediums. The term lightness connotes a philosophical weightlessness and mobility while also alluding to the physical ethereality of soundless video and illumination not intended to serve a strictly functional purpose. In Lightness both the compelling glow and the obscuring glare of light media are explored within the bounds of intimate and public space.

ARTISTS: 
Justine Ashbee
Gretchen Bennett
Zack Bent
Saskia Delores
Francesca Lohmann
Jess Marie
Jennifer Zwick
Rodrigo Valenzuela
Susie Lee

ABOUT CITY ARTS FESTIVAL

City Arts Festival’s visual art program features three one-night-only exhibitions at Fred Wildlife Refuge, with a new opening event each day. Peering through the lenses of three diverse local curators, the exhibits will showcase a wide array of visual art genres and uncover how the contemporary visual art scene interacts with music and comes to life in our city and the festival setting.

PRESS:

CITY ARTS, Rachel Shimp, October 2011

ECLIPSE, Serrah Russell

It began and ended at once.

Navigating through overlapping colored beach towels littered with tourists, he made his way to a secluded area, free of diversion or interference. The tourists had ventured nearly two whole blocks away from their climate-controlled condo to witness the golden amber orb drop beneath the horizon line. But he had come seeking more, hoping for something remarkable. 

And isn’t that the way with everything?

It seemed an unlikely place to select as a look out spot to witness something so luminous. Here the sand was tousled with shards of crushed shells and sand scarred beer bottles woven together by strands of seaweed. But from his position, with a fixed gaze ahead, not even a peripheral view would reveal anything other than the presently transforming, slowly dissolving sky. 

All that was once illuminated had returned to the darkness where it had come. 

Back home, all who knew him would have found this situation strange, that a man who believed all things beautiful to be unnecessary distractions, would journey to a remote island simply to experience the breathtaking view of the earth turning from day into dusk. In fact, he had surprised himself, but this evening it was something other than a fleeting view of a pretty sky that had enticed him.

For it is and it was, now and then, both present and past. 

It is no longer about beauty. Maybe it never was. He now knew this for certain.  But this softening light, this alchemy of brilliance to nebulous was something other than just admirable aesthetics. It was a force for change, a conduit to progression. It was at once, both closing and opening. Within the ungraspable time and space, he had experienced a sort of finiteness and at that moment an inner ache softened slightly.

Our attempts of replication will never come close. But still we keep on trying. 

In that moment, with a final glimpse at brightness, he no longer saw what he had originally come to see but there in the newly formed darkness he saw what had previously been obscured due to the captivating control of luminosity. With eyes adjusted, he walked back to his hotel bedroom, slowly but in assured determination, adeptly stepping between the fragments of bottles and slippery kelp. 

He could finally see. 

It is within light that we are fooled, believing that we are seeing all that there is. It is only as the alleyway darkens that we lose our protection, embarking on the dangerous journey into what was once eclipsed.