All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.
Philip Johnson 1906 – 2005
La Luz Del Cielo
My project for my final in Beyond Color Theory at OCAC with Michelle Ross, La Luz Del Cielo was activating with color the two triangular window spaces in the hallway by the stairs in the Jean Vollum Drawing, Painting and Photography Building. I used colored acetate normally used for gift packaging and gently tacked it to the metal frame of the window sills using Scotch transparent tape. This project acknowledged the practice of early childhood art projects using colored tissue to create flowers and colored shapes that were placed in windows to be illuminated by the sun. My choice of using primary colors red, blue, yellow, and green refers to the first colors we learn in school as young children.
La Luz Del Cielo also references the gothic cathedral and its obsession with light and Gerhard Richter’s Cologne Cathedral project in Germany, where he used 72 colors and 11,500 squares of glass to replace the south window that has had clear glass since the original colored glass was destroyed during World War II.
My goal was to enliven, add energy, and give the viewer an AH-HA moment.
Mark the groundskeeper thought that students had painted the rocks by the thesis studios and then realized that it was the light shining through my colored windows that made the rocks look red. Brian Shannon’s Drawing Foundations Class was outside collecting natural material to draw and thought that someone had painted the grass red. The class experienced the surprising effect which was created by light shining through my acetate covered windows. A group of first year young women students were walking up the stairs and stopped. “Look at your faces,” one of them said. Their faces were lit up with different colors of light shining through the window. They laughed as they spun each other around in the multicolored light.
These are some of the moments of surprise and joy that I had hoped to create with my colored window installation La Luz Del Cielo.
Jason Berlin
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