UMVA Showcase – Summer 2026: Lee Chisholm, Tim Van Hook, Jo Trafford, James McCarthy.

Lee Chisholm

Light. We live in it. We see by virtue of it. “See” in an outward sense—as when we behold colors reflecting off of opaque things, such as that new-mown lawn over there, or shining through translucent, transparent things, such as our atmosphere. There are no luminous sunsets or blue skies on the moon; for the moon’s “atmosphere” completely lacks that transparent thing we know as air and is, therefore, unchanging and void, silent and black.

We also see by virtue of light in an inward sense, as when the thinker exclaims “I see,” the dreamer dreams a dream, or the artist moves her brush in just this way so as to capture just that gesture (the one that struck such a strong chord within that she wished to memorialize it without, while the rest of what is before her she simply ignores).

But while we see by virtue of light, do we actually see the light itself? Modern physics, together with a host of experiments one can conduct in the laboratory or the classroom, suggests that we do not. Light is the unrevealed revealer. Although it bodies forth our entire world of colors and shapes in the course of bouncing off opaque objects or being scattered by the non-opaque, in itself light is invisible. Colloquially, we refer to a small band of frequencies and wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum as “visible light.” But what we really mean is visible color. Light is no more visible there than at any other place in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Omnipresent giver of life, warmth, solace, joy, and revelation, light, among so many other things, makes every work of art possible. And every work of art, when earnestly made, adds not just to the things in this world that light illumines, but arguably adds to light itself.

 

Tim Van Hook

I love common words like light that have multiple meanings and rich associations, because I’m always on the lookout for metaphors and puns that can drive the forms of my work in new ways. The common definition of the word light refers to a source of illumination, like my pendant Stijl Light, which has Mondrian-hued strips forming a Constructivist cube with a twist hung by one corner. If you perturb it, it casts crazy moving shadows on the walls and ceiling, not still at all. The design derives from a light I made of steel rod and stretched fabric twenty years ago. The three straight edges starting in a corner of a cube are joined to quarter-circle arcs across three adjacent faces which end at the opposite corner.

A related cluster of meanings of the word light has to do with weight, undoubtedly because the photon has no mass. My side table Caryatable has sides of thin steam-bent walnut, so it’s easy to carry from place to place and also visually light. The design fits surfaces to two connected edges of a cube joined to quarter-circle arcs which meet at the opposite corner, mirrored four times. The resulting biomorphic curves reminded me of caryatids, the women-shaped columns, from the Greek word karydiá for walnut, before they were carved out of heavier stone.

Heavier objects press more firmly on your skin, so successful pickpockets need a light touch. There’s a technique to manage stuttering called light contact, in which the lips or tongue barely graze each other or teeth or palate, to avoid getting stuck on plosive consonants like T-T-T-Tim. I had a severe childhood stutter, and my triptych painting Ephphatha (Aramaic for “be opened,” but sounds like a stutter) shows Jesus (coincidentally, The Light of the World) healing the boy with an impediment by casting his demons into a herd of pigs. Or not, because eventually I came to accept that “suffer the children” was meant literally. The side panels show my father doing yard work and my mother doing housework, in the dark about what I was enduring. The center panel contains the playground boys calling me Porky Pig, Jesus with demon putti hovering over Him, and me with my two primary torture instruments, the phone and the read-out-loud book. Nonetheless, the usual advice given to someone under pressure from the weight of the world is, “Lighten up!,” so the word light also has positive emotional content. The song I recorded as part of Ephphatha ends with the verse “When the class recites and everyone takes turns, count out the lines to see where youʼll seize. When the Lord sends you out into the herd, hold hands together and jump in the sea.”

My Audience wall sculpture makes light of my teenage suffering in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The twelve talking cartoon heads are the inner voices judging me during that period, forming a parade review or jury. The personas in Audience, in Gutenberg order, are a doughboy with a mushroom cloud chef’s hat, Captain Hook, the Munch scream, Mr Natural, Satan, Rat Fink, Porky Pig, Nixon (or my father), a little Dutch boy, Jesus, Vincent van Gogh, and a Raisinet wearing a sombrero. Each of them brings to light an experience or a state of mind out of my past. I still faintly hear those voices reviewing my performance, like a light glaze illuminating my art.

 

Jo Trafford

I am a poet/artist and political activist living with my husband in Portland, Maine. A year ago, my brother, who lives in San Francisco, went into memory care. In an effort to stay connected, I created collages to send to him. This began an exploration of how to tell a story with images from widely disparate sources. I explored form, color, and light with images that spoke to me.

When I began to look at light beyond what it is—a noun’s translation of light—and more as a toy to play with, my eyes saw light differently. I did a little research. I looked up idioms and song titles as possible jump off places. I started thinking of light not just as a noun but as a verb, adverb, and adjective.

In the first piece, I used light as an idiomatic verb: Throwing Light on Deaths by COVID in 2021. In an old National Geographic, I found a large image of an installation that surrounded the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, about COVID deaths. In the installation, each death was represented by a small white flag. (The installation was done by artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg). In the second piece, I used light as an adverb and as an adjective: They Were Dancing as Light as a Feather Across the Moonlit Universe Writing Their Story in the Air. In the third piece, Having Been Burned by Being in the Limelight and She Had to Take What Was Left, I used light as an idiomatic noun. In the last piece, I returned to light as a noun. But I used light not as a device to illuminate, but rather as a method to track—as in tracking a prey. This piece is a political statement against the overuse and misuse of guns: Who Got Caught in the Crosshairs.

I have always played with words in my poetry. Now I am playing with words in my collages as well. I will be more attuned to how language might influence all my work.

 

James McCarthy – Four Variations on the Theme Of Light

1. Broken Rock Falls, Hocking Hills State Park, Logan, Ohio, 1973

Hocking Hills State Park in the southeastern corner of Ohio was the closest equivalent to Yosemite’s “Range of Light” that my best friend and I could find to follow the example of our photo-hero Ansel Adams. It had towering cliffs, cascading waterfalls, and deep, hemlock-shaded gorges. It had lots of dramatic geology, but also limited light at the base of those gorges. A seasonal waterfall known as Broken Rock Falls caught our attention. Sunlight from above highlighted the cascading water falling over a talus slope with a sculpted pile of Black Hand Sandstone rocks at the base.

I exposed three sheets of 8-by-10-inch film, giving each one roughly a thirty-second exposure. As was true for virtually every photo I made with the view camera at that time, I had no idea if any of them would be worthwhile. To my surprise, an unexpected gift of alchemy: each exposure was a successful celebration of rocks, water, and light.

In the Zen-inspired zeitgeist of Minor White, I took it to be what he would call a Light7 photograph: “Images which lead us to our Creator.”

2. Reflection/Dawn, 1974

Made at dawn, just as the sun was on the verge of rising above the dark shadow of trees on the opposite shore of a still pond. Surrounded by sounds of the first chirps of waking birds, I felt myself to be in a world that was innocent and still pure. In a world torn asunder by greed, lies, racism, militarism, environmental degradation, and economic injustice, I still need that healing power of dawn to help me navigate these dark days.

3. Monhegan Harbor / Dawn, 1974

In the fall of 1974, I spent a week on Monhegan Island. I stayed at the Trailing Yew in a converted chicken coop with a small cot, night table, and kerosene lamp: $100 for a week, with oatmeal every morning and daily lunches and dinners of all the cod and potatoes I could eat.

Most mornings, I was up before dawn. On this occasion, I took a short walk down to Fish Beach, where I was surprised to see two derelict trucks half submerged in the harbor’s water. A rising tide, or ebbing . . . I wasn’t sure. The sliver of light crossing the beach and its several foraging gulls—and the gleaming white lobster boats in the harbor—offered a counterpoint to the mysterious dark shapes of those two abandoned trucks in the harbor. After breakfast, I returned to find them gone.

4. Sam Brooks, Cleveland, 1973

Sam Brooks was the first African American I came to know as a friend. I made this portrait on my last day at the typesetting company in downtown Cleveland where we both worked. After photographing Sam for much of the morning doing his work as janitor, we sat at the lunch table. Sam asked me to show him how my “fancy” camera worked.

We were face to face, a little more than a foot apart, as I slowly went through the steps of making a picture. I remember thinking “Oh my God! Sam is giving me his portrait!” as I cocked the shutter. That’s when I told him, “Now I take the picture.”

I’m reminded of the opening line of the “Irish Blessing of Light” poem: “May the blessing of light be on you, light without and light within.” Light cannot always be measured by Adams’ “Zone System” or the “Zen System” of Minor White. Sometimes there’s just enough available light for that inner light to shine through.