I wish I had checked out the Theory and Practice show at Gallery Aferro when it first opened. Unfortunately, I went on closing day, so I can't recommend that you go see Tracie Lee's incredible series "Pieces of Sky." But I do recommend that you read on to learn more about this remarkable work.
For the past year, Lee, who is based in Brooklyn, NY, has been painting the sky every day. She tries to complete these pieces in the morning from home but this isn't a rule:
...[T]he ritual of the project is independent of my location, and it has become a way of measuring and grounding myself, whether I am in my studio or traveling. The paintings are markers of an accumulation of time and place. They form a record of my observations, but also my state of mind. How closely was I able to observe and not let distractions come in? This project has redefined my notion of discipline, and how it should not be seen as a negative and rigid force. Rather I wanted to approach it as a positive part of a practice, and utilizing it to work through frustrations and doubts. I have just begun to understand how the skills of observation, discipline and painting are vitally intertwined, and create momentum for other ideas to germinate.
In September of 2006, Lee painted the sky every day for a month. It's interesting to compare that project with the year long "Pieces of Sky." In the September 2006 series, it seems that Lee worked within a larger frame, so that the individual paintings end up containing a great deal more detail. As a result, each individual painting seems to encompass more sky. The paintings that comprise "Pieces of Sky," on the other hand, capture a detail of the sky rather than the sky in detail. Taking several steps back from "Pieces of Sky," I was impressed by how the paintings worked together, each piece enhancing the light, weather and color in pieces surrounding it. Lee displayed about 260 frames from this ongoing project, which can be purchased in a series of seven.
When Tracie first told me about this project, I was reminded of Elaine Reichek's "A Lexicon of Clouds," which I had seen at MAD's Pricked: Extreme Embroidery exhibit. This piece consists of cloud details from works by El Greco, J.M.W. Turner, and Albert Pinkham Ryder, among others. Threaded throughout are bits of text from the poems of Wallace Stevens (see his poem "Sea Surface Full of Clouds"). Both Tracie's and Elaine's work made me think about the representation of clouds in art. Prudence Peiffer's essay "Sky Writing" takes John Constable's sky studies as a point of departure for discussing contemporary sky/cloudscapes.
Tracie uploaded to Flickr many frames from the piece (you can find them under the tag "sky") as well as pictures from the installation.
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