Balloon Eclipse

Billy Joe Miller, Graham Parker Ansell, Nick Skekerjian, Giffen Clark Ott, and Mitch Berg
Balloon Eclipse
2023
4' x 7' x 4"
aluminum and acrylic
On view October 7-15, 2023

Balloon Eclipse was commissioned for the Balloon Museum's activation of the Annular Eclipse on October 14, 2023.

Balloon Eclipse is inspired by the form and the envelope of early hot air balloons and like an eclipse it transforms and obscures light and color. Similar to a sun-dial, the acrylic and aluminum cast saturated colored shadows and reflections, shifting with the position of the sun and changing light. Your movement and distance near and far will animate and bring the art to life. Suspended within a prism that obscures the contemporary, graphic nature of the simple occlusion, we present the essence of the event as a memory, rather than snapshot --fuzzy, familiar, and impressionistic. 

Billy Joe Miller is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist. In addition to his studio practice he creates sculptures, installations, and public art in response to the natural world. Originally from San Diego, California, Miller now lives in the East Mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

His work has been supported by New Mexico Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Bridge Projects, The Speranza Foundation, Artists at Work: Borderlands and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Graham Parker Ansell is a Burqueño builder and fabricator. He studied Furniture Design at California College of the Arts and is currently working towards his Master's of Fine Arts at UNM and teaches fine woodworking at Santa Fe Community College.

Nick Skekerjian is an architect and designer who examines massive spatial scales and questions of nature. He has explored contemporary pedagogy with an exhibition of work at the Phoenix Art Museum and the 2018 Venice Biennale at the US Pavilion. 

His current work seeks qualities of lightness, utility, liberation, and a kind of generous neutrality/genericism. He believes design is the translation of the personal to the political amidst real constraints.

Giffen Clark Ott is an architecture and design teacher and practitioner located in the Western Catskills.

Mitch Berg is the director of Fuego Art Space in Albuquerque's south valley. Fuego provides tools and inspiration in a variety of creative media including fused glass, metals, welding, ceramics, mixed media assemblage and levity.