Artist Statement
My interactive light installations investigate how perception creates reality.
Studio-made LEDs, repurposed glass, reflection, shadow, and lensing explore the surprise of worlds beyond what we usually see. The lenses of microscopy and astronomy show patterns and processes that, bound up with the inherent limitations of ways of seeing, come to be called reality.
I am interested in the analog aspects of light that were available prior to the Digital Age. Sir Isaac Newton founded light science from candles, sunlight, and crystal prisms, repositioning himself and his experiments as the sun moved throughout the day, to compose his seminal work, Opticks.
My work brings an opportunity for slow observation of lights we see, but don’t notice, every day. There are no computers, no wifi, no software, no digital programming, no motors, and no projectors involved in my work. The movement of light in my work is analog, directly related to the real space, for example a lens sways because of air movement overhead. I fabricate my own light emitting diodes at the soldering table in order to control color and intensity. LEDs make light by interrupting a low voltage electrical circuit with a diode that glows as it hosts this interruption in the wire. It is not smart technology. When the light leaves the emitter, it goes to me, the human maker, to lens, colorize, and move, and not to a computer that is limited to the parameters of its manufacture.
This is slow light, at the pace of the human.
I activate the metaphysical aspect of my work when I perform Crystal Seeing, Using a quartz crystal ball and natural optical minerals, and ringing quartz tone bowls, I divine the inner light of the participant, known as scrying. Crystal Seeing is a personal spiritual encounter with one’s own intuition, amplified by the quartz in the Light Art environment.
In this light, I perform Crystal Seeing, a form of scrying, to divine the inner light of the participant. This practice, ongoing in my personal life since late childhood, and introduced in my artwork in 2013, comes to me through my multi-generational Kentucky family of intuitive energy workers.
Artist Bio
Dana Major is a Chicago based, interdisciplinary light artist. Major’s site-specific installations of studio-made LEDs, repurposed domestic and scientific glass, concrete, crystals, and welded steel explore how perception creates reality, in the surprise of worlds beyond what we usually see.
Her 2011 MFA from SAIC follows her BA in Philosophy from DePaul University, and an 18-month arts apprenticeship in St. Petersburg, Russia. Major has taught in the Sculpture Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and provides accredited studio internships at the undergraduate and graduate levels for students of AICAD member schools, the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. Highlights of her international exhibitions, awards, and art fairs include: Art Basel Miami, Art Expo Chicago, SOFA New York and Chicago, The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Elmhurst Museum of Art, The Archie Bray Foundation, The Santa Fe Art Center, The Pablo Center for the Arts, and the Garfield Park Conservatory. She is a longtime, past exhibiting and award-winning member of the American Craft Council.