In the sometimes empty space between technology-driven special effects and ethereal, heartfelt poetry, artist Sean Michael Kenny uses ingenuity and passion to create a personal yet accessible mode of artistic expression in his light sculptures.
These “stereographic projections” incorporate rainbow prisms, Fresnel lenses, crystals and aspheric lenses to refract and magnify a light source, in this case a single fifty-watt bulb, from a moving apparatus to a large field of colorful images that seem to emerge from nothingness.
The experimental array of lenses in motion provides a complex and poetic display that evokes spiritual and emotional responses, mostly a pervasive desire to simply sit and watch.
Kenny has set up more than a hundred such installations over the years, accomplishing a transition from more traditional media, such as painting and sculpture, into the construction of intricate yet spare light benches that project a mystical array of ghostly shapes and colors in the unique time-based experience of light sculpture.
In recent years, he has exhibited his installations at art venues in Washington, DC, Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia, and a version of his “Whispering Wind” series (pictured here) will be included in a proposal for the upcoming Light City Festival.
The work is about emergence, emptiness, contemplation, and especially change.
“Each time I create a piece, I change things up, it’s never the same, always changing, always organic,” says Kenny. “I make the layout of an installation, a particular piece, to suit a particular environment. All of a sudden, nothing’s changed, but the effects are manifested in a universe of light.”
Beyond the nuts and bolts of the apparatus itself, the piece projects its output onto a wall or back drop and creates its own environment, immersive and expansive way beyond the scale of the source materials.
Even a few small changes to the basic components of the apparatus will yield quite different results each time he puts a piece together.
The openness and non-verbal nature of the light sculptures provides an alternate reality to the verbal arena of poetry. The light sculptures are abstract and open to interpretation, similar to the joy and natural immersion of watching the play of light on water.
The ‘Whispering Wind’ concept even applies to the interaction taking place when people pass by and create a slight breeze, the lenses will spin in response to subtle air currents which in turn make delicate new refractions as points of colorful light go in and out of focus.
The resulting light show can seem consciously designed yet is produced by randomized movement. The artist creates the environment, facilitates the process and then lets it flow, like action painting with light. Lulls in the drama are interspersed with the emergence of specific events.
Like a conductor rehearsing an orchestra, Kenny takes a few hours to set up the apparatus, attaching several elements to a slowly rotating electric motor, and hanging other lenses at various distances between the light bench and the backdrop.
He imagines and experiments with new components, introducing a glass orb or holding up different refractive pieces to see what additional effects arise, thinking ‘what do I need?’ to enhance a piece of light sculpture to its greatest potential.
“In one beam of light,” says Kenny, “negative space coexists with an abundance of beauty and infinity. ‘Whispering Wind’ evokes a form of visual hearing deep in the soul. This feeling of expression is witnessed like the softness of wind and a gentle voice calling out.”
More than a dozen of his works can be viewed in photos and video on his web site, smklight.com.
The work offers meditative open-mindedness, and has a calming effect, yet there is also tremendous drama emerging in the unfolding movement and startlingly sharp and colorful effects that arise from momentary emptiness.
He creates the work to follow his vision, providing an experience of peaceful emotion, a journey that incorporates both emptiness and fulfillment.
“It’s contemplative, like looking at the stars in the night sky, the poetry of silence,” he says. “Each component stands alone, by itself, then they work together, almost like watching an eclipse, the northern lights, a sunset. It opens up a discussion of reality. If you look at it, when everything disappears there’s nothing there, it’s empty. Then, not much changes, and there’s a universe.”
His work captures an ethereal drift of spontaneous concentrations of light and shadow, engineered by happenstance and the craft of intention.
It makes one think of supercollider physicists conjuring up exceedingly short-lived subatomic particles, whose exotic manifestations reveal important information about the world we live in, and the seemingly empty space that surrounds us.
