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Nitelite, 2002 cellulose, plastic bowls, LED lighting | |
| Nitelite, a group of 10 tabletop sculptures, presents a similar disjunction. The nightlight's primary task is to eliminate mystery. These amplify it. Each blue plastic dome houses a miniature landscape of spores and blossoms, tendrils, tresses and fine, curling cilia. A small aperture atop each dome allows us to peer into these tableaux (again made of modeling compound), and the lights within make the shapes visible also as haunting shadows on the domes' exterior walls. There's a childlike charm to the forms, which look as if they were shaped from Play-Doh, but that innocence competes with a more threatening, nightmarish quality. "The wood is full of shining eyes / The wood is full of creeping feet / The wood is full of tiny cries / You must not go to the wood at night," reads the Henry Treece poem upon which this work is based. --from Leah Ollman's review in the LA Times | ||
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| Installation of Nitelite at SolwayJones, July 2002. | ||
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| THE MAGIC WOOD, by Henry Treece from The Black Seasons, 1965 The wood is full of shining eyes, The wood is full of creeping feet, The wood is full of tiny cries: You must not go to the wood at night! I met a man with eyes of glass, And a finger as curled as the wriggling worm, And hair all red with rotting leaves, And a stick that hissed like a summer snake. The wood is full of shining eyes, The wood is full of creeping feet, The wood is full of tiny cries: You must not go to the wood at night! <br> He sang me a song in backwards words, And drew me a dragon in the air. I saw his teeth through the back of his head, And a rat's eyes winking from his hair. The wood is full of shining eyes, The wood is full of creeping feet, The wood is full of tiny cries: You must not go to the wood at night! |
He made me a penny out of a stone, And showed me the way to catch a lark With a straw and a nut and a whispered word And a pennorth of ginger wrapped up in a leaf. The wood is full of shining eyes, The wood is full of creeping feet, The wood is full of tiny cries: You must not go to the wood at night! He asked me my name, and where I lived; I told him a name from my Book of Tales; He asked me to come with him into the wood And dance with the Kings from under the hills. The wood is full of shining eyes, The wood is full of creeping feet, The wood is full of tiny cries: You must not go to the wood at night! But I saw that his eyes were turning to fire; And I saw the nails grow on his wriggling hand; I said my prayers all out in a rush, And found myself safe on my father’s land. The wood is full of shining eyes, The wood is full of creeping feet, The wood is full of tiny cries: You must not go to the wood at night! | |