Spencer Finch (1962 - New Haven, Connecticut)
Painting Air (Napa), 2013
glass, hardware, and wall painting

About the Work

Painting Air (Napa) is a site-specific installation created for the HALL St. Helena tasting room. Finch sourced the colors for the wall painting by sampling the natural environment around the winery – from soil samples to local grasses and trees to the color of the sky.  As the colors change in the shifting light of day, and as gentle air currents create movement in the hanging glass panels, viewers are immersed in an environment of changing reflections.  The resulting kaleidoscopic effect of the work brings these diverse references to the exterior landscape into the interior space of the tasting room, and also makes reference to terroir in wine-making, which is the set of special characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place bring to a wine’s complexity in taste.

Biography


With both a scientific approach to gathering data and a true poetic sensibility, Brooklyn-based artist Spencer Finch creates installations, sculptures and works on paper, which filter perception through the lens of nature, history, literature and personal experience.

Spencer Finch was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1962. He has a BA in comparative literature from Hamilton College and an MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. Finch lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.