Fast Forward: Twisters and Tornadoes by Susan Silton
April 6 - May 18, 2007
Ground Floor Hallway Exhibit

Powerful storms can have profound effects on habitats and the species that live on them, ultimately affecting local biodiversity. Changes in weather patterns and the increasingly destructive power of such storms have been blamed upon global climate change. In North America, tornados develop when a northern cold air mass meets the southerly warm moist air mass near the Gulf of Mexico along the infamous “Tornado Alley.” The intense frequency of tornados in the U.S. is due to the continent’s unique geography extending from the tropical south into arctic areas and lacking major east-west mountain ranges to block air flow between these two areas. This unique topography allows for many collisions of warm and cold air, creating the conditions necessary to generate strong storms. Rising temperatures in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico may be affecting both the frequency and strength of tornados in recent years.

Tornados can come in many shapes, but are typically in the form of a funnel with the narrow end touching the earth. Artist Susan Silton’s Twisters are rendered from photographs of funnel clouds taken by storm chasers. Her fascination with tornados stems from a respect for the power of nature and our attempts to control and classify it. The artist digitally manipulated these photographs to produce picture-perfect tornados in the landscape. Presented as small black and white prints, the series suggests a typology of the beautiful shapes that such storms can take despite the destruction that is often left in their path.

The series, Tornado in a Jar, are stills taken from a film that the artist made while recording a popular science experiment. When the ingredients of water, soap and vinegar are vigorously shaken in a jar, a funnel is created – a sort of homemade tornado. These photographs reflect the artist’s imaginative attempt to recreate the forces of nature itself by capturing the incredible spinning motion of such a storm.

Through the artist’s creative lens, we can share her view of the sublime aspects of tornados.

Susan Silton, based in Los Angeles, has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including Feigen Contemporary, New York; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Angles Gallery, Santa Monica; New Orleans Contemporary Art Museum; UCLA/Hammer Museum; and Allianz Zeigniederlassung, Berlin, Germany. Her work was included in Picturing Modernity: The Photography Collection, SFMOMA (2006); and in the exhibitions New Acquisitions/New Work/New Directions 3: Contemporary Selections, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, and Selections from the Permanent Collection II: American Art on Paper from the 1960s to the Present, Washington University Art Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri. Silton has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, as well as awards and commissions from the Durfee Foundation and Clockshop Foundation. She is a recipient of a Getty/California Community Foundation Fellowship in 2005, as well as a C.O.L.A. Individual Artist Fellowship in 2003. Her work has been published in Cabinet magazine, Lesbian Art in America (Rizzoli), and in noted art historian Amelia Jones’s most recent book, Self/Image