“There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes”
-Emily Dickinson
There is a light for all seasons and all spaces. In the north we are accustomed to the long angles of afternoon light that stretch across bleak winter landscapes in sepia tones. The Mediterranean serves up a warm glow that bears no resemblance to its northern brethren. There are slices of the earth that are bathed in perpetual light for months at a time before being plunged into darkness in equal measure. How we see the world is
inevitably linked to the light we live in.
Alice Dalton Brown is an artist who splits her time between the Hudson Valley and the Finger Lakes. Presently she is working with pastels as well as oil paints. A few years back, Dalton Brown was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome and has since been developing themes related to her time spent
there. She lived for a month at the academy and found herself quite taken with the view from her apartment window. She photographed this view and is now developing oil paintings and pastels based on what she saw from her window.
In the beginning of her career, Dalton Brown was taken with architecture. She has always painted or drawn the things she responds to strongly and this has gradually changed over the years. Architecture was part of her work for decades, in particular houses which she sees as a metaphor for identity. More specifically, Dalton Brown focused on porches which exist in between the inside and outside of a
house.
Gradually her work evolved from looking at houses from the outside in to looking outside from inside the house. Curtains blowing in a window became a theme in her
paintings. For her, they imply a human presence.
Dalton Brown’s art tends to be larger in scale though she has done works on smaller scale as well. To her, a smaller scale promotes intimacy in her work. Smaller size also allows her to move quickly and change things more deftly as she goes
along.
Dalton Brown works with light in her paintings. In Rome, she found the light much warmer than she is used to working with even though she was there in February and
March. She had previously spent time in Italy during the summer but this was her first visit during the winter. She was surprised to discover how the light still enhanced the warm colors of the buildings and earth. In New York State where she lives, the northern light is much cooler.
Margaret Crimmins is a sound designer and editor based in New York City. She just finished a narrative feature called Tribe. The film is set in the context of the building of dams by the Brazilian government that displaced indigenous people. The film starred a 13 year old indigenous girl and was filmed entirely
in the Amazon Basin. The film follows the fictional story of this girl who is separated from her family and trafficked. There are elements of magical realism woven throughout the film. One of the film’s directors is a professor at George Washington University who teaches a course on climate change.
Crimmins’ role in films is during the post-production period. For Tribe it was a colleague she had worked with in the past who recommended her for the position. The film community is a tight circle and Crimmins says that most of her work these days is by word of
mouth.
In January, Crimmins had a film at Sundance called This is Home, a film about Syrian refugee families being resettled in Baltimore after spending years in refugee
camps. The film is an intimate look at what happens to refugees beyond the headlines. All of the families survived trauma in their homeland only to arrive in the US and have to relearn everything.
