Grant Whipple​

 

Grant Whipple is an artist and educator whose studio practice focuses on porous borders, ecological emergencies, and technological innovations in the twenty-first century through the lenses of drawing and painting. As an educator, he approaches drawing and painting not only as time-honored practices, but also as vital tools to navigate the complexities of the changing world. In the face of the fast-paced demands of digital technology and the attention economy, using the hands and eyes to represent the world allows students to engage in slow observation and ground their bodies in a dynamic sensory experience. At the upper and lower divisions, his approach to teaching equips students with the skills and visual sensitivity to make meaningful connections to their personal shifting landscapes. Born in Chicago, Whipple received his BA from DePauw University and an MFA from Michigan State University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Art Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He exhibits his work locally, nationally, and internationally and was recently selected for publication in Studio Visits Magazine.

 

Moments of Emergent Light Statement:
On another moon, I dropped an Italian Lira into the steel coin box and the lights switched on, illuminating the majestic painting before me, and standing in full silence in the Contarelli Chapel, the striking raking light off Caravaggio’s Calling held me transfixed. Time froze in that light. The snap of a lighter’s flint from down the dark hall broke my spell as a Carabinieri guard lit a cigarette in the distance. As he took a drag I was caught in a different kind of disbelief, that the guard was smoking not only in a church chapel but puffing away next to a timeless cultural artifact. The pulsing red glow of that cigarette ember haloed into the surrounding darkness at the moment the coin-operated light clicked off. The guard stepped back into the shadows, and I now have a difficult time knowing if this is memory or dream.

The moment energy passes from slightly warm to the touch into visible red at around 700 nanometers; these moments fascinate me: Or on an electric stove, you twist the dial, the burner changes from cold black into hot red, and visible light emerges; it is red hot though this is just the beginning of the heating up for visible light. Artists talk of warm reds and cool blues, but for the physicist, the reverse becomes true. Red is the lowest form of visible light energy and as energy increases light passes through Newton’s ROYGBIV rainbow until violet disappears out of the visible range and into the ultraviolet.

The classic symbol for emergency—literally fire on the mountain, against the twist that red light has healing therapeutic properties and functions as a signal to a change in energy states. When I sink in and relax, I forget the earth’s molten core swirls with magma underneath but that a potential eruption is particularly evident on the fault lines, amidst drastic ecological and social changes, and given these changes, these paintings here seek to present and unravel the certain and emerging contrasts: thick texture versus raw canvas, passage versus impediment, transparency versus opacity, sci-fi versus biography, memory versus vision, healing versus pain, blue versus red.

From the very small steady red light on a powerstrip in the corner of the bedroom to the red(shift) light astronomers use to measure the location of distant galaxies, red light has been Calling and humbling me recently too, and in this group of paintings, as a merging of memories and visions, I explore the various possible engagements with red light and all of the mystical power that these mentioned binaries and transferences hypnotically encapsulate—for artists and physicists alike, and for anyone else that stops dead for the color known as red. ​

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