Like many others I have long been fascinated with clouds. I love their colors and textures and their ever shifting, morphing and mood changing qualities. And I’ve been fortunate enough for the past 35 years to live in places that featured mostly unobstructed views of them traveling past my window. Consequently, I have a sizable collection of cloud photos, which I have used in the creation of various artist made products over the years. But mostly I just collect them.
So I’ve taken a lot of photos of clouds, not as part of my primary art practice, but just as a way of remembering my favorites. And of course, clouds have been the backdrop for many of my favorite images.
But as a land-based being my view of the clouds often includes terrestrially anchored foreground objects like wires and trees and buildings. So at some point I began to see the sky as more than a background or a show unto itself. I noticed them playfully interacting with things in the foreground and started to think of them as integral to the composition. Thus began the Vapor Draw-ings series, where clouds became part of the story, not just the mood music.
Once this change in point of view came I started looking for whimsical and interesting interactions between the clouds and these other elements. As I sought out more examples I was surprised to find my cloud subjects acquiring even more personality, playfulness, and sensitivity to the more solid objects rooted in the earth. I’m aware that it might seem silly, or contrived, and certainly understand the critique that this is all just “clouds illusions”, to quote the Joni Mitchell song of my youth, that I am supplying or imposing all this on our vaporous passers by. But for me that’s what photography is; observing, noticing, editing and applying some kind of framework to all that in order to create a richer observation, interpretation or meaning. Isn’t that what art ultimately is?