Illuminations

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Commissioned by Davis and Louise Riemer. Inspired after locating an artwork on the property of Carl Djerassi of a thin alabaster plate embedded fairly high inside the stump of an enormous redwood tree.  Walking inside the tree stump and bathing in the soft glowing light of the alabaster was an unforgettable experience.  I tried to capture some of that here.  I sourced the Alabaster from the Sculpture House in NY and sliced the slabs as thin as I could get them with a Japanese arborist saw.  The process was tedious, slow and labor intensive taking almost one year.  I treated the Alabaster with Paraloid crystals and used Jade reversible glue applied with a needle applicator to make the drawn lines come to life with either the green or black currency ink dust.  It is possible to view the plates from either side and I was hoping for some kind of interaction between the black line figures and the green currency symbols. 

The shelf below has the plates and frames reversed to reveal the line figure drawings. (wiring is visible)