Steve Poleskie, Wedgewood

In my photograph “Wedgwood,” the light, rather than the subject, was the first consideration. Up until then I had been photographing my still lifes in the late afternoon, when the sun slanted very low and the shadows were long, and mysterious. I found I was I unconsciously dealing with the technical problem of light and dark that Eli Siegel referred to in his thirteenth question.

“Does all art present the world as visible, luminous, going forth? –- does art, too present the world as dark, hidden, having a meaning which seems to go beyond ordinary perception? –-and is the technical problem of light and dark in painting related to the reality question of the luminous and hidden?”

Rummaging in my garage one bright, summer morning for some gardening tools, I became fascinated by the sun shinning in on an old work table leaning in a corner. Why had I not seen this light before? I had lived here for thirty-nine years. The sun’s rays, passing through the glass so old that it had a wavy pattern, were warm and gentle, the “opposite” of the harsh gold light of the late afternoon I had been using. I cleared the table of its boxes of rusty nails and empty oil cans and ran to the house for some objects. My hands full of stuff, I shouted to my wife to, “Help me bring some things to the garage!”

That day we worked the rest of the morning, using my new found light source in the garage, placing and replacing things, pots, fruit, flowers, in various relationships, until a tree threw its shadow across the window and the table went dark.  –SP