Spencer Finch Brings Skyscapes Inside

THE DAILY PIC (#1763): The translucent sheets at the top of this image make up The Western Mystery, the very latest public installation by Spencer Finch, one of my favorite artists, opening to the public tomorrow at the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park.

Finch’s rectangles get their hues from measurements he took of the colors of sunset skies around Seattle. Looking at the installation photos I was sent, I suddenly realized that his piece makes concrete (and almost comical) the old saw that says that good modernist architecture dissolves the distinction between outside and inside, landscape and building. He has brought the outside in, but only by turning it into something resolutely man-made.

The gap between nature and culture is bigger even than most people realize. Finch seems to prove that if we want to take nature into our human minds all we can really do is culturize it. (Photos by Mark Woods)

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