Breath of Cypress Moon
- Breath of Cypress Moon
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ON THE COVER: Carol Mickett/Robert Stackhouse. Breath of Cypress Moon. 2013. Installation.
Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse created "Breath of Cypress Moon" as a room-size installation in the Selby Gallery of the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota. With this piece, the artists continue to explore the idea of identity in both stable and changeable aspects. Their eight-foot-tall cypress wood sculpture is shaped like a wheel with eight spokes. For half of the wheel, rows of white paper strips hang gracefully from the white-washed spokes overhead, creating scrims between segments of the moon's lighted face; on the other, dark side, golden cypress slats create a lattice-like roof, plunging the interior into shadow. A walk through and around the sculpture gives the visitor a sense of waxing and waning, of choosing to explore or dwell in the light or dark side of the self as one chooses one's position in the world. "The moon becomes a metaphor for who we are in the world," Mickett says. Stackhouse adds that experiencing the installation involves awareness of changes in perspective and perception. "There's a way of looking at the moon that if you explore it, all of a sudden you see something different. We're using our combined abilities to reflect that." [End Page 3]
Carol Mickett, who holds a PhD in philosophy, is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and writer. Her most recent video work includes directing "History Speaks," a video archive of the history of Kansas City, and serving as producer/writer for Uniquely Kansas City, a five-part documentary for Kansas City Public Television. She and her husband, artist Robert Stackhouse, have been collaborating since 1999. They live in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Robert Stackhouse is one of the South's foremost contemporary artists, known for his large-scale architectural paintings and sculptures that often deal with themes of transition and journeys. Stackhouse graduated with a BA from the University of South Florida in 1965, and, by the 1980s, he was regarded as one of America's most prominent young sculptors. He taught at the Corcoran Gallery and later lived in New York; by the 1990s his installations were going in large public places nationwide, then worldwide. His works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Walker Art Center, and The Art Institute of Chicago, among others. He and his wife, Carol Mickett, have been collaborating since 1999 and have a studio in St. Petersburg, Florida.
