Cloudscape by Christopher Lavery

For Kentucky-based artist Christopher Lavery, the childhood game of picking out shapes from clouds must have curious implications indeed. Mutable imagination is turned into the concrete in Lavery’s latest installation, Cloudscape. The ethereal puffs are made tangible in metal, each taking the form of a generic cumulous cloud that is propped up on a metal stand similar to those supporting water towers. The familiarity of connection between cloud and ground is an odd juxtaposition to a form that is often perceived as unreachable. These cloud billboards, some reaching as high as 42 feet in the air, undergo a transformation at nighttime as they light up in a bright fuchsia, which again challenges the concept of the floating and evanescent cotton ball in the sky.