In Conversation: William Lamson and Chris McCaw

Join exhibiting artists William Lamson and Chris McCaw in conversation about the remarkable lengths they went through to create the works on display in the current SFAC Main Gallery exhibition 10,000 Fahrenheit. Every day, for five days, Brooklyn-based Lamson focused the sun through a lens strapped to a small cart in order to burn an arc into the dry earth of the Mojave desert. The result of his labor is the two channel video, A Line Describing the Sun. McCaw, a Pacifica-based photographer, spent two months inside the Arctic Circle using a retrofit Cirkut camera from the late 1800s to burn the arc of the never-setting sun onto a scroll of paper inside the camera. In the end, McCaw ended up with eleven unique prints, each reflecting a 36 - 48 hour exposure. What did each artist have to go through to obtain access to the perfect site? What acts of physical and/or mental endurance were involved, and how did they plan to stay safe during their shoots? What toll did the act of creating these works take? And how do these works fit into their broader practices examining landscapes, weather patterns and our changing planet?  

10,000 Fahrenheit, on view through December 8, is a group exhibition in which the exhibited works reference the sun/heat/light but are ultimately rooted in the artists’ desires to capture the intangible: endurance, memory, resilience, the passage of time and personal connections to the universe at large.

Artist Bios

William Lamson is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist. His work has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, including the Brooklyn Museum, The Moscow Biennial, P.S.1. and MOMA.  He has produced site specific installations for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and Storm King Art Center. His exhibition Badwater is currently on view at Make Room in Los Angeles. He has an MFA from Bard College, and he teaches at Parsons and the School of Visual Arts in NY. williamlamson.com

Chris McCaw has been photographing and working in the darkroom since he was 13 years old. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; LACMA, Los Angeles; and the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is held in numerous permanent collections, including SFMOMA; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. McCaw currently resides in Pacifica, CA, and was born and raised in the Bay Area. He is represented by Haines Gallery, San Francisco and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York. chrismccaw.com