Intersections Exhibition Catalog (PDF) - Minneapolis College of Art ...

LINDA
ROSSI
ALEC
SOTH
COLLABORATION STATEMENT
The Observatory is less a conventional collaboration than
a conversation across time.
Alec visited the Goodsell Observatory at Carleton
College in 2001 for the project Vantage Points. He
used the frame of the window to articulate the
relationships between inside and outside and
between constructed and natural environments.
“I don’t know a lot about life at Carleton. I’m a
tourist. Maybe that makes the beauty more
apparent. From my first day on campus, I
found a distinct and consistent beauty. This
beauty has something to do with the mix
of rural serenity and intense scholarship.”
Linda created the installation Optic Nerve in
Goodsell in 2006, an intervention into the space
that dramatized artifacts and intensified the
sense of history. “In the illuminated display case
surrounding the base of the large telescope, I
replaced the old glass plate images of stars and
galaxies (see an example in Alec’s photograph Fly
and Comet) with my own pictures, printed on glass,
of science experiments and objects.” Visitors pass
through the lobby to the window-lined room
above (Alec’s photograph Observatory), where
the reflecting telescope reaches for the stars and
The Moon and the Sea of Crisis was shot.
In 2011 we talked about the provocative
intersection of our work within Goodsell
Observatory and read Rebecca Solnit’s A Field
Guide to Getting Lost. We selected particular
images (Rossi’s Luminos and Soth’s Fly and
Comet) based on Solnit’s concept of the Blue
of Distance. Blue Distance is both optical and
emotional; blue defines the edge of vision and
embodies the longing for a distance we never
arrive at.
INTERSECTIONS