How is Life Perceived Through Glass?

"He had only to open his eyes; but a weight was on them; a fear.  He strained; he pushed; he looked; he saw Regent's Park before him.  Long streamers of sunlight fawned at his feet.  The trees waved, brandished.  We welcome, the world seems to say; we accept; we create.  Beauty, the world seemed to say.  And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly.  To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy.  Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now and again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tingling divinely on the grass stocks - all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now.  Beauty is everywhere" (Woolf 69).  

In this passage of Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf is illustrating the perception of nature and the seemingly small instances of beauty.  Beauty is found in ordinary exemplars, but only if individuals, such as Septimus, can perceive it through his or her "pane of glass" (Woolf 87).  Dale Chihuly demonstrates this perception through his stunning artwork and installations.  

Dale Chihuly is a glass artist.  To explain, he uses glass as his primary medium in his works because "The process is so wonderfully simple, yet so mystifying" (Chihuly).  Chihuly is inspired by glass, since "Glass itself is so much like water.  If you let it go on its own, it almost ends up looking like something that came from the sea" (Chihuly).  This simile is similar to Woolf's beliefs of water that waves are like the life cycle, beautiful and continuously ebbing and flowing.  

One of Chihuly's famous installations is Artpark Installation.  Artpark Installation, located near Niagara Falls, is an outdoor installation comprising of "handblown sheets of stained glass in simple arrangements" (Chihuly).  Although it is simple, this installation comes to life with "The magic ... in the light" (Chihuly).  In other words, the glass gives "physical expression to light" (Chihuly).  

Artpark Installation 

Artpark Installation 

Artpark Installation's location near Niagara Falls emphasizes the representation of water as the life cycle.  Glass, or perception, influences life.  Perceptions discern beauty individually.  Life is beautiful through a clear glass, but perceived differently through a colored glass affected by "pane" (Woolf 87).  

How do Artists Exhibit the Life Cycle?

In "The Death of a Moth", Virginia Woolf explores the life cycle of a moth, a "simple ... form of ... energy" and "zest" (Woolf 696).  She emphasizes that death is a part of life, but that life itself is more powerful than death.  Also, she illustrates that perspective influences the regard of life and death through the "windowpane" (Woolf 696).  This regard greatly impacts the work of artist Damien Hirst.

Damien Hirst is a non-traditional artist that examines "the deep profundities of life and death" (Damien Hirst).  One of his earlier but "most important" works is "A Thousand Years" (Damien Hirst).  Hirst describes "A Thousand Years" as a "'life cycle in a box'" (Damien Hirst).  It is composed of a "vitrine ... split in half by a glass wall" (Damien Hirst).  On one side of the glass wall, there is "a box reminiscent of a die" that contains "newly hatched flies"; they can fly through small holes in the glass wall to the other side, "where an Insect-O-Cutor hangs" and "a decaying cow's head is presented beneath the fly-killer" (Damien Hirst).  

"A Thousand Years" by Damien Hirst 

It is elemental for Hirst to create "'bookends'", or "pairs and duplicates", in his sculptures (Damien Hirst).  In "A Thousand Years", Hirst develops the pair of life, the side of the sculpture with the "newly hatched flies", and death, the side with the "decaying cow's head" and the "Insect-O-Cutor" (Damien Hirst).  He does this in order to present life and death as not unique, yet "'independent of the other, but they live together'" (Damien Hirst).  Also, the glass wall is like the "windowpane" in "The Death of a Moth", since they both allow reflection on "The possibilities of pleasure" in life as well as the "hard fate" of death (Woolf 696).

How Is Music Incorporated Into Installations?

In "Because My Father Always Said He Was The Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' At Woodstock", Sherman Alexie uses music as a motif to demonstrate that it is a "powerful medicine" that has both "form and function" (28-29).  Music is a compelling art medium that can mend "broken hearts" and can inspire others (30).  Recently, artists began to incorporate music into mesmerizing installations, in particular Janet Cardiff's The Forty Part Motet.  

In the fall of 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA) exhibited The Forty Part Motet as its first sound installation.  According to ARTNews, The Forty Part Motet is a "14-minute work [that] ... continuously [plays] a composition by 16th-century Tudor composer Thomas Tallis with individual voices coming from each of 40 loudspeakers" (Pollack).  In his composition, Tallis wrote lines for each of these 40 voices, or singers.  Hence, individuals can listen to a single singer, several singers in unison, or the harmony of all of the singers.  The most effective component of this installation is that there is a pause at the end of "each 'performance', during which you can hear the sounds of the people around you" (Schaefer).  This pause allows the audience to comprehend how each individual voice conduces to a captivating "choral effect" (Pollack).  

The Forty Part Motet 
Fuentidueña Chapel, MOMA 

How Do Impaired Artists Positively Illustrate Aspects of Disabled Life?

In "Disability", Nancy Mairs reveals that the media denies "the existence of [her] ... kind absolutely" (14).  Although it is true that "disability ... may enter anybody's life" at any time, I researched and discovered that there are impaired artists that positively illustrate aspects of disabled life, in particular the blind photographer Bruce Hall (14). 
Curator Douglas McCulloh explains Bruce Hall's purpose for practicing photography with an antimetabole:  "Most photographers see in order to photograph.  Bruce Hall photographs in order to see" (McCulloh 34).  Bruce Hall, born with multiple, serious eye conditions, loves photography and "has constructed his world from photographs" (McCulloh 34) because it enables him to have "a strange form of double vision" that he calls "'intensified seeing'" (McCulloh 34).  This double vision comprises his mental impression of his subject and the actual photographic result of it.  Hall's photographs are mainly glances into the underwater and the "autistic worlds", because he believes that "One can visit, gather glimpses and impressions [of these worlds], but it is impossible to truly inhabit either space" (McCulloh 34).  Two of his photographs that intrigued me are Silhouette, an underwater photograph, and Aberration.  Silhouette, an underwater photograph, depicts the serenity found in the subsurface world, and Aberration is a perception into the visualization of autistic children of water droplets.  

Silhouette 

Aberration