To follow a train of thought from a couple weeks ago, that is, a certain preoccupation with unique perspectives on otherwise cliche forms of beauty (as in Larry Chait’s captivating views of landscapes), I’ve been looking at clouds a lot lately.

The tone struck by Ken Fandell in his work is very much one I find myself admiring and striving to emulate — an often understated, deadpan sense of humor that exists underneath a real, sincere observation of the drama of the world and the emotions within it. His images of post-its demonstrate this quite well:

from the Thoughts I Had on a Hike in First and Second Person project

The light hitting the water at sunset, the translucense of the leaves and paper: it’s all quite postcard-beautiful. But there’s quite obviously something else going on, self-reflection, self-loathing. The post-it reveals this landscape to be a two-dimentional, unreal surface. Besides, every sunset is temporary. Where there is beauty there will soon be darkness.

Hundreds of Skies Above and Beyond Manhattan

Fandell’s somewhat more tonally ambiguous examination of clouds and sky — this is the work that has been on my mind lately. These works demonstrate an intense, painstaking craftsmanship — seamless, swirling conglomorations of gloominess and rapture, suggesting meticulous Renaissance fresco painting more than fanciful digital and photographic handiwork. Certainly the natural majesty of the sky is bent into labyrinthine contortions of time and space — like some sort of celestial intestinal tract. A method is laid upon these clouds (they are documentation of the sky in certain places the artist has experienced), but the put-it-over-the-mantelpeice glory of grandios cumulus is still there. Despite the digital knot-tying and visual acrobatics, the blue and gray and white remain striking because they began as a familiar cloudy blue sky.

The Sky Above Here (Seattle, WA, May 2003), The Sky Above My Home (10/6/2002 - 6/14/2003), The Sky Elsewhere (Northern California, Lower Austria and Northern Italy, 2003)