Artist Combines Technology and Tides at San Juans Art Museum

Sam Stubblefield in his studio. Contributed Photo

By SJIMA

Cre­ative peo­ple “look at the world dif­fer­ent­ly; it’s part of the job,” observed artist-archi­tect Sam Stubblefield.

The glow­ing lights in the glass win­dows of the San Juan Islands Muse­um of Art hint at the mys­tery of his instal­la­tion “SPACE, MUSES, ETC.” He aims to blur the bound­aries between art, engi­neer­ing and design.

SJIMA presents a curios­i­ty cab­i­net of works select­ed from pre­vi­ous shows.

Sam merges unex­pect­ed mate­ri­als and sit­u­a­tions such as plants, boats, com­put­er vision, earth­quakes, the inter­net, jel­ly­fish, real-time data from nature, miles of bungee cord, mixed-real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy, urban con­di­tions, pro­ject­ed video, oceans, robot­ics, nat­ur­al land­scapes, and soft­ware algorithms.

Stub­ble­field wants his arrest­ing images to pro­voke thought about new options for see­ing art. And they cer­tain­ly do that.

Data Music is a new genre of music in the gallery that responds to the inter­net by using real-time data to gen­er­ate music-mak­ing. The sound emerges from the infor­ma­tion dri­ving it. One source used is live infor­ma­tion from mul­ti­ple NOAA buoys in the oceans mov­ing with the tides, or the posi­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al Space Station.

With See­ing Space, Sam uses a large for­mat and inter­nal­ly illu­mi­nate stud­ies of the moon cre­at­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with NASA. Stub­ble­field wants us to con­sid­er our own point of view on the solar sys­tem and our chang­ing rela­tion­ship to space.

In anoth­er piece, Sam was inspired by the life of F.F.J. Kjeld.to write poet­ry. In the poems, Stub­ble­field imag­ines expe­ri­ences in the after­life and the rela­tion­ship between death, exis­tence, love and time. The writ­ten vol­ume streams on an intrigu­ing dig­i­tal display.

The life-sized Bear, Bear is con­struct­ed of wood and met­al. The work was done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sari Knotts a spe­cial needs hos­pice care nurse. Giv­en the nature of her work, she need­ed to strength­en and refresh her­self. So, she decid­ed to real­ize a phys­i­cal bear-she sees them as big, gen­tle beings, a pos­i­tive, heal­ing image.

The exhi­bi­tion pulls from recent work on dis­play at the Euro­pean Cul­tur­al Cen­tre in Venice, Italy, dur­ing the 2019 Bien­nale, The Mass­a­chu­setts Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Art Basel Mia­mi, and in-progress work from the artist’s Seat­tle and Hong Kong stu­dios. Oth­er projects and com­mis­sions include Art Basel, Mia­mi, and The Amer­i­can Memo­r­i­al to Gun Vio­lence at the 2019 Chica­go Archi­tec­ture Biennial.

Stub­ble­field was part of the design team of Amazon’s head­quar­ters and Seat­tle City Light. He says of the expe­ri­ence work­ing with a tech­ni­cal archi­tect, nurse and him­self on urban design you get out­comes that are phe­nom­e­nal­ly dif­fer­ent than expected.

Planned dur­ing the exhi­bi­tion, SJIMA will broad­cast a live online gallery walk with the artist.

This exhib­it is open until Dec. 7. Hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Fri­day-Mon­day and admis­sion is $10. SJIMA mem­bers and those 18 and under are admit­ted free. Mon­days are “Pay As You Can Days.” Please note that COVID pre­cau­tions are in place and that all vis­i­tors are required to wear masks. If a per­son does not have a mask one will be provided.

This show is spon­sored by The Hon­ey­well Char­i­ta­ble Fund, Kim Miller, the Town of Fri­day Har­bor, San Juan Coun­ty, Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts, Wash­ing­ton State Arts Com­mis­sion, San Juan Island Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion, Print­onyx, Har­bor Rentals and Browne’s Home Center.

SJIMA is locat­ed at 540 Spring Street in Fri­day Har­bor, Wash­ing­ton. For more infor­ma­tion go to www.sjima.org.

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