My love affair with clouds continues. Clouds encapsulate the emotions of human life that more static entities cannot. They can be majestic or tender, suffocating or fleeting. In the Midwest, we say that clouds are our mountains. But unlike mountains, clouds are ever-changing.
My latest linocut, Emancipation of the Sun, highlights clouds that I saw over Lake Michigan earlier in the summer. My daughter had joined me at the Krasl Art Fair, and after the tiring job of setting up the festival tent and hanging the work, we retreated to the lakeshore. As we walked the waters edge, conversation flowed as the scenery changed, finally culminating in the darkening clouds lifting away, releasing the sun to shine on other shores.
The Great Lakes are so vast that to our human eyes, they are simply freshwater oceans. The sun was setting over Chicago as well, but was still high above the West Coast and beyond. We have no control over the sun. Imagine how grateful early humans must have felt when the sun rose in the morning, and how terrifying it must have been when it left. They had to create stories and rituals — their own sort of faith that the sun would return.
Today we know that the sun returns. Our cell phones tell us exactly when to expect it. We celebrate or curse our society’s penchant for time changes. But the rising and setting is still the most breathtaking part of the day. It is a small acknowledgement that much as we wish to control everything about our lives and the people in them, we cannot. We must let go.
We must emancipate the sun.
