Begin Morning Civil Twilight

by Michael Oatman, October 29, 2007

Editor’s note: Spencer Finch is a conceptual artist whose principal interests are observation and perception. Finch’s art takes a variety of forms, from works on paper to sculptural objects to set design, but his main medium is installation. Finch constructs environments designed to depict nonvisual experiences in visual terms: a wall of electric fans means to express the breeze on Walden Pond, a constellation of light bulbs recalls a night in the Painted Desert, a blossom of blue balloons signifies an autumn sky over Coney Island. A 1989 MFA graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Finch’s work is on exhibit in “What Time Is It on the Sun?” a midcareer retrospective at MASS MoCA. When Chronogram asked Troy artist Michael Oatman to view the Finch exhibit and write his impressions, he focused on a single piece, “Sunlight in an Empty Room (Passing Cloud for Emily Dickinson, Amherst, MA, August 28, 2004),” and delivered a two-part conversation about that work and Finch’s art overall. Oatman’s title for the article, “Begin Morning Civil Twilight,” is taken from an aeronautics term designating, roughly, the time of day about a half hour before sunrise. As Oatman explains it: “Some years ago, I found a military handbook that featured the following term: BMCT, or Begin Morning Civil Twilight. It means ‘the period of time at which the sun is halfway between beginning morning (nautical twilight) and sunrise, when there is enough light to see objects clearly with the unaided eye. At this time, light intensification devices are no longer effective, and the sun is six degrees below the eastern horizon.’ Seeing Finch’s work reminded me of this term. I was struck by the notion that there are still moments in our experience of nature when the human eye is more sensitive, more capable, than any instruments we have devised.” Finch’s work is on view at MASS MoCa through spring 2008.

One-Day Diary

8:08 AM
Today is August 28, 2007, and for two weeks I have been trying to juggle my schedule to take a trip to Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Four years ago, artist Spencer Finch was at her house on the same day; that visit materialized in a work now on view at MASS MoCA. Sunlight in an Empty Room (Passing Cloud for Emily Dickinson, Amherst, MA, August 28, 2004) is one of many of his installations that translate his experiences at sites around the world into physical objects. There are drawings of “darkness,” stacks of fans that simulate a hillside breeze, and windows with lighting gels that “color match” flickering candlelight. “What Time Is It on the Sun?” the first survey of Finch’s work, was organized by MASS MoCA curator Susan Cross, who also produced the artist’s first monograph.

Passing Cloud is a simultaneously daunting and sylvan artwork. A bank of fluorescent lights is blocked and revealed (depending on the viewer’s location) by a massive hanging assemblage of blue theatrical gels, a cloud held together by clothespins: a homemade weather front.