Susan Chorpenning

Dates:
December 1, 2009 – January 15, 2010. This exhibit will be installed thru March 1, 2010.
Part of “Let There Be Light” 28 Light Based Art Installations throughout Downtown Long Beach illuminating the Darkest Days of the year.

Location:
248 Pine Ave Susan’s exhibit is on 3rd Street next to 122 E 3rd St
Window is on 3rd Street just below Pine Long Beach 90802

Artist Contact:
suechor@sbcglobal.net
SusanChor.com

Previous Phantom Galleries

Fiat Lux III Long Beach
phantomgalleriesla.com/gallery0168.htm

"Fiat Lux II" December 2006 January 2007 Pasadena
phantomgalleriesla.com/gallery0047.htm

Light Artist Brightens Up the Darkest Season in Long Beach

Susan Chorpenning's art installation "Fiat Lux IV"

Location: 248 Pine Ave, Long Beach, CA 90802
Window is visible on 3rd Street just below Pine
Exhibit runs: January 12 December 5 to March 12, 2010
Viewable 24/7 with optimal viewing hours between 5 pm - 1 am.
Gallery Hours by appointment only.

"Fiat Lux" means "Let There be Light." Chorpenning means to light up the darkest days and longest nights of the year. If you've not seen one of Susan Chorpenning's twinkling light window displays, you've not had a true urban winter-wonderland experience!

"Fiat Lux II" shimmered and pulsated with moving lights; these were painstakingly intertwined and stretched across the space until they entirely filled it. From afar, the window seemed to hover in front of its pane of glass. Up close, one's whole field of vision was engulfed. The effect was invigorating exuberance.

"Fiat Lux III" was more subdued than was "Fiat Lux II," its lights restrained (if only slightly) and elegant. It filled the two windows to the left and right of the location's main doorway. The walls were painted bright colors with added blocks of color behind some light elements. These light elements come in a variety of shapes and sizes, such as twinkling globes, mini-lava lamps, colored compact fluorescents, and tiny, twinkling, multicolored lights mounted on frames. Stretcher bars were used throughout, but instead of being the structure for paintings, they were the structure for lights, with strings of lights wrapped around the stretcher bars, and variations on this theme. These "frames" are the most recurrent image in the piece. More subtle it was, but indeed still a beautiful sensory enterprise.

"Fiat Lux IV" pushes the ideas from the earlier works even further. Lights are "mis-used" to create shapes, and color zaps the eye. Mirrors offer fragmented reflections, while more lights are again wrapped around stretcher bars. Common materials (like plastic straws), are combined with lights to create strange forms, but there is an awareness of form, shape and color, which reminds us that art can be fun, too.

More about the Artist

Chorpenning is from Altadena, via New York and Europe. She has had numerous solo shows and siteworks in galleries and museums, nationally in New York, the San Francisco, Texas, and internationally in Paris, France, and Germany. She has performed to rave reviews at Dixon Place, The Knitting Factory, BACA Downtown, The Painted Bride, and Claremont College.

The Fiat Lux pieces are part of Chorpenning's Dark Rooms series, which include works made with electric light, or reflected light, illuminating darkened spaces.

Chorpenning's solo show at Dangerous Curve in 2004 was one of her Light Rooms. In these, she uses paint on walls and floors to record "memories" of constantly moving sunlight streaming in through doors, windows, and skylights throughout a given day. All Chorpenning's past light rooms have been records of sunlight as it actually came into the rooms, but in "February Thirtieth," the sunlight was fabricated, hence the title.

Chorpenning has noted that light traces left from another part of a day can have a surprising psychological effect, causing the viewer to perceive a sense of morning-time in a room which has the morning light painted in place. Imagine the effect in a room that, facing north, doesn't have any direct sunlight at all. The space at Dangerous Curve is such a room, and the effect of Chorpenning's multicolored traces was profound.

In October, Chorpenning completed a public commission, "Granite Lookout", awarded through the Los Angeles Dept. of Cultural Affairs. Composed of light and granite, this piece combines our most solid material, stone, with our most ephemeral, light. It is located at 450 Temple Street, in front of Firehouse 4.

Partners:

The Long Beach Redevelopment Agency is proud to partner with Phantom Galleries LA in the revival of empty storefronts along our major corridors, while also showcasing the arts and helping to build a sense of community and culture in Downtown Long Beach. For more information, visit LongBeachRDA.org