She Needed Some Space, San Francisco, CA, June 2014
The Savernack Street Gallery is an alternative art space created by Carrie Katz in San Francisco. The gallery is engaged by looking through a reversed peephole that has been installed on the gallery’s door. When I was asked to do a piece for the Savernack Street Gallery the first thing that popped into my head was that I wanted to make the inside of the peephole look as big as possible and that I really wanted to draw the viewers attention inwards for as long as I could. To do this I made a box that is 7″W x 7″D x 7″T that is lined with mirrors that are facing each other. I drilled some small holes into the box and mounted a very bright light to the outside. The light seeps in through the small holes, bounces off the mirrors, and then reflects small circles of light into infinity. The effect creates a sense that a viewer is looking into a vast starry sky as they gaze through the peephole. In my large-scale installations I usually try to engage at least 3 of the viewers senses. For She Needed Some Space I added two other elements to not only engage the viewer’s sense of sight but also to create auditory and tactile stimulation’s. On the inside of the door I mounted 3 metronomes and set them to “tick” at slightly different cadences. At times they align harmoniously in syncopated rhythms but then quickly dissolve into a cacophony of rhythmic dissonance. To create a sense of touch I mounted a vibrator to the inside of the door that set the portal into resonance. As viewers press their faces against the door to look through the peephole their forehead begins to vibrate at the same frequency as the art piece. This piece is lovingly dedicated to memory of Faux-LuJo.
