Hi everyone, I am Duong. And today I will give an overview about Peter Erskine and his Light Artwork. At first when hearing about Light Art, I only think about using artificial material such as LED laser and other material to make Art, so when I came across Peter Erskine Artwork, I felt not only amaze but also admiral by his work. He does not use LED or any human made light source but he used the basics and we most familiar with: the sunlight to make art.
His idea is very simple, using light to make art, not only that his art also has deep meaning into them.His art is also about light and shadow, nature and human, life and death. Based on three big idea: Sunlight is energy, all life is solar powered and everything is connected to everything else.
SOS made during the 1990, so 20 30 years ago, however it is still very relevant till now. His project is about global warming, warning human about it by showing the beauty of sunlight and nature but also raised a question: Can our children played in the sunlight. With all global warming and ozone depletion, it is a question that humanity have to face right now and in the future. S.O.S. addresses the beauty and dangers of Sunlight: the beauty of the rainbow and photosynthesis, and the dangers of global warming and mass species extinction.
For this SOS, Peter Erskine stated himself that people love his pieces because of its natures that they love about it, it is inside human ourselves, not because his art has incredible technique. He feels like I just present nature to people in a different way and because of human nature, they just love it. One way to describe this artwork is like what walking in the rainbow.
As I mentioned before, his artwork is from 20 30 years ago, but glass and lighting technique that he used has been developed for hundreds of years.
His technique is simple but what he really wants is to make the used out of existing structure for example in ancient Rome to produce more beautiful and different way to looking at this architecture.
He also has many other project such as project made in library or the Rainbow Sundial Calendar where instead of using the old, ancient way of making a sun clock using shadow, instead using sunlight pass through prism to determine time of the day.
Presentation Link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/133G-we7ZdLpsZiL_arK7uam6G1lIE-sdqRc1VMeBhnY/edit?usp=sharing