Moving Light

1985, Diego Rivery Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute
Installation: Butcher paper, two slide projectors (one with a green gel covering the lens; the other with a red gel), saltpeter, incense sticks.

Two beams of light, one green and one red, were projected onto a long sheet of butcher paper suspended from the ceiling in the center of the room. The lights, projected from opposite sides of the room, met in the center of the paper, creating a single beam of yellow light. The strip of yellow light was coated with saltpeter and lit with an incense stick. As the audience circulated around the piece, they intermittently blocked the projected light, allowing the red and green beams to be cast on their bodies, thus, demonstrating to others how the yellow light is created. As the lines on the paper screen burned, the red and green lights appeared through the burned out space and on the opposite walls. The process of light growing on the wall drew attention to the great height of the ceiling. The piece was completed when the red and green lines of light reached the top of the ceiling.

The residual elements of the performance remained as an installation.