This project is part of an ongoing series of works that utilize photoluminescent materials. It was conceived and made during a one month residency at I-Park in East Haddam, Con- necticut.
During the day, this piece is no more than an everyday object, a table and two chairs set in an unusual place, a remote meadow. It is a conspicuous image or a possible place to stop and rest. At night it undergoes a transformation: the tops of the table and the two chairs begin to glow. The table has absorbed sunlight during the day and is now emitting its own pale light. This light lasts most of the night and creates the image of a floating table and chairs to passersby. Up close, the light is intense enough to illuminate those who might sit at the table.
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This work is part of my continued interest in creating hybrid- ized objects that fuse aspects of both living and man-made materials. Even though this is not a living organism able to grow and change, it is reacting and responding to its environ- ment, revealing a physical world much more complex and profound than our conventional understanding allows.
The physical processes that take place at a molecular level in this pigment become visible to us, as energy is stored and then re-emitted as light. This phenomenon, and by exten- sion, the quality of the material that literally makes visible the invisible, to transform itself and its environment, embod- ies the fundamental aesthetic goal of my work.
A table is a common object but this table, like a plant, is solar powered and self-sufficient, deriving all its energy from the sun. It uses this energy not to grow, but to become a welcoming light source in the middle of a dark night.
