All of the season's holidays are celebrations with light, by no coincidence, as they align with the Winter Solstice on December 21st. This is when the longest night and the shortest day of the year occur, from which point the sun slowly returns to us and we begin our journey back toward Summer.
To dispell the darkness and create beacons of hope, we burn yule logs, light candles and put up strings of electric lights indoors and out, creating the shimmering displays of magic we so dearly love.
Barry Underwood is an artist who creates magic with light all year round, integrating it into the most unlikely of natural landscapes. He is currently exhibiting photographs of his work in a show called Earth Engines.
Earth Engines
Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph Ave. Oakland, CA
Showing November 21st 2009 - January 9th 2010
Hours: 12-6, Thurs - Sat & by Appt.
Barry Underwood's surreal staged photographs, intermingling issues of contemporary painting, cinema and land art, surveil landscapes of the impossible. Just as earth and electricity are the elementary particles from which energy takes shape, Underwood fuses authenticity and artifice to nurture nature into flashpoints of wonderment.
Johansson Projects
Earth Engines on Flickr
H/T to Design Crisis