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"The light was what it was all about: Poly professor emphasizes light in photography exhibit
by Emily Logan, Mustang Daily To someone with a trained eye, art can provide elaborate lessons and values that cannot be attained in everyday experience. For others art is just pretty or dull or static. But for an artist to create a work that communicates an idea, a philosophy or a lifestyle, she has to take into account the variety of viewers she will have. The exhibition, "Natural Light and the Italian Piazza," a display in the Performing Arts Center of more than 160 photos taken by architecture professor Emeritus Sandra Davis Lakeman, provides the viewer with images of how light manifests itself in the architecure of Italy, and how this collaboration improves the lives of the people who live there. Lakeman has many hopes for what the viewers will get out of the exhibition. The captions that accompany the photographs in the exhibition explain her ideas about light such as the existential idea of light as reality. She also emphasizes the unity between the scientific and artistic views of light. "We have more scientific pursuit and direction, I would say, more than art." Lakeman said. "But people learn things in different ways, so I'm trying to combine art and science to make it seem much more memorable and understandable." Put simply, Lakeman wants viewers to recognize the beauty of what light can do for a simple architectural structure. "It is really also showing beauty in the common, beauty in just a very simple doorway," Lakeman said. Many of the photos portray people enjoying themselves in the piazza. "I think (the Italian people) have a much higher quality of life... and I think a lot has to dowith them walking through the streets," Lakeman said. "In a sense they are much more in touch with nature than we are. We are carved within society so we're not out in the air and in the sun and light as much as they are." The exhibition was first shown in the Town Hall of Siena, Italy, the city where many of the photos were taken in 1992, and then again in Portland, Ore. in 1994. Lakeman has focused on natural light and the piazza in her architecture classes for about 15 years. Claudia Pedroso, a licensed Architect who graduated from Cal Poly in 1990, went with Lakeman to Siena in 1988. "Witnessing in person the wonderful Architecture of Italy surely beat sitting for hours at the library trying to memorize 1,000 slides of architecturally historical buildings for an exam," Pedroso said. Pedroso said she has since kept the idea of natural light in her mind. Professor Lakeman taught us to see light and watch how it changes the environment after a rainy day, when fall starts and to see how it changes the appearance of a place, whether it is a building, a piazza, or, in my case, the farm fields near Moorpark, where I live," Pedroso said. No matter how educated in art the viewer may be, Lakeman's exhibit will invoke something, whether it is emotion, appreciation or education. An Italian proverb that Lakeman uses throughout her exhibit summarizes the atmosphere of the exhibition: Natural Light and the Italian Piazza will be displayed until Nov. 30. There will be a public viewing of the exhibition in cooperation with Art After Dark on Friday, Nov. 5 from 5 to 9 p.m. There will also be lectures on Oct 8 and 13 on campus. For more information and a schedule, visit www.sandralakeman.com. |
The collection, 'Natural Light and the Italian Piazza' is currently on display at the Performing Arts Center.