Sunset Bubbles
Arts
independent studies
What began with the desire to contemporize the medieval notion of the vanity of earthly life, developed into a notion of play as a method of bypassing conscious thought processes to access free associations. In a series of thirteen 1.5-hour public events, 60 to 260 people were engaged at one time in the making of gigantic soap bubbles—held at University of California’s Porter College, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art History, and the Santa Cruz County Regional Burning Man unSCruz. Most events were timed to end at sunset, when there was both enough sunlight remaining for participants to be sure footed, yet dark enough to facilitate the viewing of intensified light refractions. A number of image artists were compelled on their own volition to document and share the results with me, including: Carolyn Lagattuta, Stephen Louis Marino, Zhill Olonan, Shubham Modi, Lia Pierce, Bridget Lyons, and others. The artists who gave their time and skill, recognized that through their medium could be captured the ephemerality present at each event. The outward appearance of the inner experience of participants is evinced through their documentation. If not for their effort, only memory would remain. Look closely at the body language and faces of participants and observe the varying embodiments of play and untethered consciousness. C.W. Thomson observed you could spend a lifetime studying a soap bubble. I posit that you can spend a commensurate time observing the people who make them.
A final Sunset Bubbles will be held Friday, 8 June, 2018 at 6:00 P.M. at the Porter Squiggle.
Project Webpage: https://www.rachelsmith.online/bubbles
