ARTIST: Rebecca Cummins
TITLE: Special Charges: People Doing Strange Things With Electricity
MATERIALS: Dorks, photographic prints on paper.
DIMENSIONS: 18" wide book
DATE: 2007
DESCRIPTION: A a series of photographs of people doing strange things with electricity.
TITLE: Shooting Stars
MATERIALS: Glass art, .22 rifle, sound triggered flash, archival inkjet photographic prints face mounted to plexi-glass
DIMENSIONS: 5 prints, 16" x 20" each
DATE: 2007
DESCRIPTION: In this series, well-known NW glass artists were invited to donate their artwork, which was shot with a 22 rifle. The moment of impact was captured with Harold Edgerton's sound triggered flash.
Special thanks to the artists (Benjamin Moore, Dante Moriani, Sean Albert and Ben Cobb) and Mark Zirpel, Bob Edgerton, Elizabeth Lowe and Bob Patrick (Butch’s Gun Shop).
STATEMENT: I have been exploring the sculptural, experiential and sometimes humorous possibilities of light and natural phenomena (often referencing the history of optics).
Works include paranoid dinner-table devices (silver periscope goblets); an interactive computer/video rifle (To Fall Standing updated physiologist E.J.Marey's photographic rifle of 1882); a periscope birdbath; Light Rain, a singing rainbow machine done in collaboration with Paul DeMarinis, site-specific portable camera obscuras and lens inversions.
While much of my work involves installation, in the last 3 years I've been using the camera to document performative events; several photographic works record the movement of shadows in sun and moonlight. These works are designed to stimulate a greater awareness of how the Earth's movements affect daily and seasonal light and shadow occurrences quite specific to the moment and to geographical location.
CONTACT:
Rebecca Cummins
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
rcummins AT u.washington.edu
rebeccacummins.com