ATMOSPHERE AS ART: NEW WORKS
Atmosphere can create art within any space. We’ve curated a group of fascinating recent works that capture, influence, and comment on atmospheres close to home and in galaxies far, far away.
WALLY PACHOLKA
Sometimes, in order to see the beauty of atmosphere, you need to turn off the lights.
Wally Pacholka, once accountant by day, photographer by night, captures breathtaking shots of our atmosphere and beyond, by situating himself as far away from the light pollution streaming from our urban blights.
Comets, planets, meteor showers, and Milky Way clusters emerge as the stars of his show. They are all shining, even though we don’t usually see them. Pacholka likes to create these celestial landscapes from vantage points in national parks across the US.
Pacholka is a three-time "Picture of the Year" winner for Time and Life magazines' end-of-year photograph editions. His photos have also appeared in National Geographic. And NASA has often featured his works in their "Astronomy Picture of the Day."
Now, fully devoted to his art, Pacholka is focused on capturing each national park in its own glory. So far, he has produced masterpieces in the Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, Arches, Yosemite, and Yellowstone.
While the photos look technically brilliant, his techniques are rather simple. He uses a standard 50mm lens mounted on a tripod, lights his way with a small flashlight to highlight nearby rocks and other land features. Pacholka runs his exposures anywhere from a few seconds to a minute.
Thanks to Pacholka, we get to see the incredible beauty of our galaxy and all of its spinning treasures.
MANON WETHLY
Belgian photographer Manon Wethly captures images of liquids and powders as they hurtle through the atmosphere.
Wethly flings these substances up and away, collaborating with gravity, to create these exquisite expressions. Airborne coffee, cocoa, milk, wine, and sugar do a dance in the air, while at the same time becoming part of it.
She experiments with different formats and backgrounds, but most of the photos were simply taken with her iPhone against a clear blue or partly cloudy sky.
Check out more on Wethly’s Instagram account and her blog.
BEAUTIFUL SMOG
A small exhibition, recently on at the Transformer Gallery in Washington D.C., featured four artists’ different interpretations of Atmosphere in Beijing. Somehow, it manages to make a smog-filled atmosphere beautiful.
The artists, Stephanie Kwak, Zach Storm, Paul Shortt, and Chandi Kelley, were inspired by a two-week visit to China last summer sponsored by the sister cities of Beijing and Washington D.C. It was organized and funded in part by a D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities Sister Cities International Art Grant.
Stephanie Kwak’s video "Smfoggy," is a touristy frolic, light and airy despite the gray air, through the Forbidden City.
Chandi Kelley’s four photographs are treated as trompe l’oeil scenes posted on the walls of construction sites.
Zach Storm painted 11 panels that each show a different shade of smoggy atmosphere, correlating to each day of his stay in Beijing.
Paul Shortt’s digital video “Smog” follows a man as he walks through D.C.’s construction zones wearing a surgical mask.
Old World artists captured the state of the atmosphere during their lifetimes in their paintings of sunsets. According to a new study, published recently in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, the colors of sunsets painted by artists can be used to estimate pollution levels in Earth's past atmosphere.
Specifically, the red-to-green ratios in these correlate to the amount of volcanic ash and other pollutants that were in the atmosphere at the time.
For example, in artist J.M.W. Turner’s work, “The Lake, Petworth: Sunset, Fighting Bucks,” the beauty of a late afternoon sunset is captured in a single moment above a prairie. The deep color of the atmosphere is not only mesmerizing to the viewer, but also informative to scientists.
The 1815 eruption of Tambora volcano in Indonesia, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, filled the atmosphere with high volumes of volcanic ash and smoke. It made sunsets appear more bright red and orange in Europe for several years after the eruption was finished.
In their study of sunset paintings created between 1500 and 2000 AD, there were more than 50 large volcanic eruptions.
"Early artists created an inadvertent record of climate change. That began to change around the mid-20th century when artists deliberately started picturing the explosion of the human footprint," William L. Fox, director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, told The Scientific American.
Read more about Beautiful Atmosphere, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including The Character of Atmosphere, Capturing Air & Atmosphere, Beautifully, Now!, and Raspberry Galaxy & Woody Whiskey Atmospheres.
Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Atmosphere in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 06.29.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!
PHOTO CREDITS:
- Photo: by Wally Pacholka. “Crater Lake Galaxies.”
- Photo: by Wally Pacholka. “Yellowstone at Night - Milky Way Arch over Old Faithful.
- Photo: by Wally Pacholka. Milky Way over Moonlit Haleakala Crater.
- Photo: by Wally Pacholka. False Kiva.
- Photo: by Wally Pacholka. Craters of the Moon National Monument.
- Photo: by Wally Pacholka. Arches National Park.
- Photo: by Manon Wethly. Airborne Coffee.
- Photo: by Manon Wethly. Airborne Cocoa.
- Photo: by Manon Wethly. Airborne wine.
- Photo: by Manon Wethly. Airborne Sugar.
- Image: by Stephanie Kwak. Still from “Smfoggy.”
- Image: by Stephanie Kwak. Still from “Smfoggy.”
- Photo: by Chandi Kelley. “Landscapes.”
- Photo: Courtesy of Transformer. Zach Storm’s “Atmosphere,” installation.
- Painting: by J. M. W. Turner. “The Lake, Petworth: Sunset, Fighting Bucks.”
- Painting: by Richard Wilson. “Lake Avernus and the Island of Capri.”
