"36 Hours" and "There was a Time..." by Sean Landers

Sean Landers, 36 Hours, 1995

Sean Landers, There was a Time..., 2004

Cynthia Daignault's "I Love you more than one more day"

Cynthia Daignault, I love you more than one more day, 2013 (356 paintings of the sky for each day of the year)

Now on view at Lisa Cooley Gallery through 20th October 2013.

Clouds: Part 4

Berndnaut Smilde's Nimbus II was all over the internet this spring. I can't stop thinking about this magical event of an artist creating his own cloud wishing I could apply it to my water samples (Could I make water? Dream on). I don't know how long it lasts but the fact that it exists as a lamda print and not an installation, tells me it is a fleeting situation, just like a real cloud passing quickly by in the atmosphere.

Berndnaut Smilde, Nimbus II, 2012

Bryan Nelson writes: "The clouds are generated using a smoke machine, but Smilde must carefully monitor a room's humidity and atmosphere in order to get the smoke to hang so elegantly, and with such life-like form. Backlighting is used to bring out shadows from within the cloud, to give it that look of a looming and ominous rain cloud."

Clouds often cover up the things I long to see - the ocean, the blue sky, the city below me from the airplane above, etc. In some circumstances, I wish for the cloud on the horizon to be disguising the Thirteeners that are thousands of miles away from where I live now. I know the mountain range is on the other side of the soybean field but a cumulus just happens to be in the way. Yes, I can pretend. Perhaps Smilde's nimbus hides something about the room - the warehouse that looks like a chapel. What is the sort of thing that lies behind this cloud in a space like this? What is it distracting me from and why?

Another one of my favorite artists, Leandro Erlich, is also working with clouds as seen from this photograph from the Armory Show via Hyperallergic.com:

Leandro Erlich, La Vitrina Cloud Collection (London), 2011

I am not sure how these clouds are printed on glass but they are layered like Dexter's blood samples lined up in a row. They become specimen but the cool blue light and the variety of shapes still indicates they are still a magical object to behold.

Leandro Erlich, Sklylight, The Clouds Story, 2009

Clouds are not a new subject for Erlich but these take on a more comical, Vik Muniz like approach in their unlikely yet specific formations.

Finally, two other clouds that I've been wanting to post:

Kevin Van Aelst, Common Clouds, 2007

Nina Leen, Unknown Woman Eating Cotton Candy

I am always thinking about clouds.

Clouds: Part 3

Spencer Finch, Taxonomy of Clouds


Nichole Frocheur, From She Said Yes


Mark Morrisroe, The Sky, 1986


Diane Rosenblum, Clouds for Comment

From Rosenblum's website: In the series Clouds for Comment I post my photographs of skies in social media such as flickr.com. People make written comments on the photos, and I superimpose a selection of their words on my prints."


Cai Guo-Qiang, Clear Sky, Black Cloud, 2006


Ben J. Madden, Clouds #3514, The Walking Poet, 1 block from Minneapolis Institute of Arts/MCAD, from my top floor window, facing S, approx. 35° up from horizon, at 1:07:36 PM CST Oct 26, 2011


Robert Adams, From Gone? Colorado in the 1980s


Irina Rozovsky

Zachary Davis, Sweet Spot Drift, Digital Video Projection

Click on this link for Anne de Vries, Forecast.

Obsessive Collections by Sarah Hobbs

Sarah Hobbs, Denial, 2008

I have always loved Sarah Hobbs's Untitled (the perfectionist). Upon perusing the Critical Mass finalists, her portfolio is one that struck me the most with examples of mass collections of the same object all relating to eccentric behavior.


Untitled (paranoia), 1999

From her artist statement: "These photographs are the result of an ongoing exploration of the neurotic tendencies that exist in all of us. The images represent the psychological arena as opposed to real space. The carefully staged photographs depict phobias and obsessive-compulsive behaviors and how we attempt to deal with them. Set in domestic spaces, the images illustrate the idea that even the most comfortable spaces can house our uneasiness...."


Untitled (indecisiveness), 1999

"My process begins by researching human behavior. I then set out to put my concepts into three-dimensional form. Sometimes this process comes quickly, but other times it may take months to translate a mental image into an environment. The interiors create a mood in the work that aptly mirrors what is going on inside one’s mind while experiencing a certain condition."


Escapism, 2009

Maia Flore: Sleep Evaluations

A balloon and a cloud from Maia Flore:

Yet another tornado warning

Francis Alÿs, Tornado, 2000- present

"Every year since 2001 Alÿs, at the highpoint of the dry season in March, drives his car to the southeast edge of Mexico City where smoky clouds rise from cornfields burning after the harvest, and grey swirls of ash and sand loom on the horizon. He carries his video camera and runs toward the tornadoes hoping to catch them as a surfer catches a wave. His nose and mouth are protected only by a handkerchief. Once he reaches one, he runs into the eye of the storm and stays as long as possible. This is an absurd act but he tries to forge a moment of bliss in the midst of chaos."


Susan Silton, From Twisters and Twisted, Twister #2, 2003

From the website: "Susan Silton's Twisters are digitally manipulated photographs of tornadoes originally taken by professional storm chasers, which she then reduces to a small, intimate scale, and converts to black & white with a richness and subtlety reminiscent of drawings or a fine silverprint. Long interested in the aesthetics and metaphor of movement, she is known for her colorful Aviate series of streaking abstractions generated from bookplates of birds. Her new tornado images show spectacular spectral funnels that fissure the atmosphere with a concentration of wind-energy and swirling pressures. Milky-white streams puncture a dark enveloping sky and touch the ground in turbulent, body-like, ways."


Twister #5, 2003


Twister #6, 2003

More Clouds, More Storms, More Rain: Mitch Dobrowner

The photographs of Mitch Dobrowner remind me of the walls of rain I've driven through in Houston, Texas, the clouds that look like a forming tornado above the car on a Kansas interstate, or rain falling so hard, we had to pull over on the freeway in Wyoming. I'm wishing the cold, wet spring would go away after the freezing, icy winter. Come on summer... where are you? Tired of listening for the tornado warning at 3 in the morning...


Mitch Dobrowner, Road Near Guymon, Oklahoma, 2009


Monsoon, Lordburg, New Mexico, 2010


Funnel, Cornfield, Northfield, Minnesota, 2010


Bear Claw, Moorcroft, Wyoming, 2010


Clouds Near Limon, Colorado, 2010


Wall Cloud, Davidson, Wyoming, 2009


Trees-Clouds, Texline, Texas, 2009

Anthony Lepore's "Low Clouds," 2009

For a rainy, dark day in Muncie, Indiana.

Clouds Part 2

Gabriel Orozco, 1994

James Turrell, Roden Crater

Alfred Stieglitz, Equivalents

Ann Stautberg, 9-6-98 Texas Coast, 1999

Alec Soth, Bonnie (with a photograph of an Angel), Port Gibson, Mississippi

Lorna Simpson, Cloud, 2005

Gerhard Richter, Rooms, 1970

Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison, Suspension, 1999-2000

Eadweard Muybridge

Vik Muniz, The Rower, 1993

Richard Misrach, Cloud #240, 1993

Pedro Meyer, Las Vegas, 1998

Clouds Part 1

Gerhard Richter, Seascape (Cloudy), 1969


Alvin Langdon Coburn, The Cloud, 1912

Gustave Le Gray, 1857


Tara Donovan, Untitled, 2003

Laura d'Ors, Untitled, 2008

Jacob Hashimoto, Clouds, 2002

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1991

Nan Goldin, Sky on the Twilight of Philippine's Death, 1997

Lee Friedlander, Maria Friedlander, 1969

Olafur Eliasson, I Believe, 1992


John Baldessari, Cigar Smoke to Match Clouds That are the Same (by Sight-Side View), 1972-73


Robert Adams, Colorado Springs, 1979


Thomas Alleman, Altadena, 2009


Genevieve Cadieux, Sky/Body, 1992