An array of reflective balloons are arranged in a straight line in a public lobby. The environment is reflected off the dots while the line squiggles due to wind patterns.

As soon as I returned from Tokyo about a week and a half ago I got straight to work creating the pieces for the exhibition at Material. I was very happy to get started on these ideas and put them into physical form.

I had done some testing and sketches for the layout of "You & Me" and knew it was going to be a larger scale piece. This is an image of the ceiling section that the lights would hang from. It's a fairly large piece (4 ft x 8ft x 6ft), so building a large, flat white section of ceiling for it to hang from was a bit of a task. The other difficult part was constructing a wiring scheme from the ballasts down to the tubelights. I had broken one of the glass tubelights early in the testing because the metal brace was on too tight. For a while I was unsure of the weight of the lights hanging by themselves and being pulled from different directions wouldnt just break the whole 'Me' section apart.

Here's an image of the 'You' part soon after completion to make sure the electricity was running correctly.

Me next to "You and Me"

Here's a lovely picture of the setup for "Blue 88". I wanted this piece to be as clean as possible. It's all right angles and white wires. The color filters I got in Tokyo and are a very nice deep blue. I tried to find fluorescent color tubes here in the States but they were this aqua-blueish color; no good. If you're up on your LED technology you know that blue was the last color they were waiting to develop before LEDs could go full spectrum. It was all red and green for a long time, and as soon as blue came out in the late 90s it led to a burst in the applications of LEDs since they could now produce every color; r-g-b.

James Clar: Material will open for a reception on Friday, March 17th from 6-8 pm. The exhibition will run through April 1st.

The inaugural artist co-hosted by the Fedex Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis and the Lantana Projects artists residencies program, James Clar will present two completely new works using his signature light medium at Material in an exhibition opening Friday 17 March.

Contact John Weeden, Director of Lantana Projects, for more information on Lantana Projects at: 901-550-8925, or via email at info@lantanaprojects.org

Contact Eric Mathews, Associate Director of FIT, for more information on FIT at: 901-292-7795, or via email at emathews@memphis.edu

Material is located at 2553 Broad Avenue, two doors west of the world famous Beer Joint. Parking is available on both the north and south sides of Broad Avenue.

Following the opening reception the exhibition will be open by appointment only by contacting John Weeden, Director of Lantana Projects at 901.550.8925, or via email at info@lantanaprojects.org

Lantana Art Auction March 24th, 2006

Back in Tokyo...

Back in Tokyo for a short time for the 9th Japan Media Arts Festival. This year's festival is in the same location as last year's, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Ebisu. Its a nice location, with the exhibition taking up the 3 floors of the Museum. The first floor is the lecture hall and the second and third floors are the animation/still imagery and the interactive art gallery, respectively.

Walking around Tokyo is great. Even when you were just here a couple months ago things change so quickly. New stores come and go and new buildings suddenly are erected where old ones stood. This abstract glass building is between Harajuku and Omotesando.

Here is a new phone from AU that has a nice LED display imbedded into it's shell. So when the display is not on it is invisible. Very slick, though the phone itself is a bit large and I'm not a fan of how it looks when open, clunky.

This is from the inside of the brand new Tadao Ando designed Omotesando Hills. While the outside front facade of the building is very boring (think of a 3 story concrete apartment building), the inside is actually pretty interesting. The building reveals itself to be more triangular in nature with the shopping center being one continuous spiral lined with ultra high-end stores. Where do the Japanese get the money for their obsession with luxury goods? I haven't the slightest.