Trillium Light Bath

Trillium Light Bath

On Exhibit 2025-2027 Gallery Without Walls

This project is sponsored in part by a grant from the Clackamas County Cultural Coalition (managed by the Clackamas County Arts Alliance) and made possible by funding from the Oregon Cultural Trust

Trillium Light Bath originated from a desire to address our cultural difficulty in processing collective grief surrounding climatic precarity and the consequent effects of rapidly shifting landscapes due to the rise in permacrises and pivotal natural disasters.

When considering a regional ecological symbol for contemplative reflection, The Pacific Trillium (Trillium ovatum) immediately sprang to mind because of its ubiquitous associations with rebirth, purity and the interconnectedness of nature. These rich meanings are inherent in the very name assigned to its taxonomic nomenclature: Latin for in threes (Trillium), egg shaped (ovatum). Throughout the world the number three carries profound significance across disciplines and cultures. We see its effects in geometry, physics, religions, art, botany and biology; even down to the very foundational genetic structure of carbon based life itself i.e. DNA condons.  The egg stands as an enduring potent and primordial symbol that holds within its delicate form the eternal mysteries of life, creation, renewal and potentiality.

This project serves as a public sanctuary wherein patrons are invited to symbolically bathe themselves in prismatic light to wash away the grime/gloom of climatic grief and solastalgia, provide hope and to encourage both contemplative and communal activism towards the possibilities of an Earth reborn into ecologic syntony.

Sketch-up renderings of concept design- light transitions dawn, daybright, dusk.

Trillium Light Bath

82.5 in x 36.375 x 31.18 in

Steel, Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) posts, cable, and acrylic

2025

“I’m not sure how or when I began my apprenticeship with sorrow. I do know that it was my gateway back into the breathing and animate world. It was through the dark waters of grief that I came to touch my unlived life...There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive.”
— Francis Weller