In the late 1970s, video artist Mary Lucier pointed her camera at the sun. It was a revolutionary thing to do because, to most, it was a bad idea. The sun scorched each tube, leaving a dark smear on the film.
“You can’t predict the effect of the sun on technology,” Lucier said recently.
The videos became “Equinox,” chronicling the rising of the sun over Queens across several days, ending in a blaze of heat, light and color. That work is now part of a retrospective of Lucier’s career, on view at the Catskill Art Space through Saturday, August 24.
“Equinox” was just the start. Lucier has watched the effect of climate change, technology and humanity on the planet.
“Presented nearly 50 years later,” wrote CAS executive director Sally Wright on Instagram, “as we grapple with the impact of environmental degradation, the work underscor[es] the devastation of global change. In this context, the work is as much about the natural world degrading technology as the inverse—a city laid vulnerable to the impact of climate change.”
Mary Lucier spent most of her adult life in New York City, and still has a base there, but lives much of the time in Cochecton. She grew up in rural Ohio and has “always been interested in the out-of-doors,” she said. “When I was a child, we took drives on Sunday afternoons to ‘Mary’s Woods.’ It was very formative in my attitude to art and the landscape.”
