Exhibitions

Pattie Chalmers, Bill Conger, Mark Forth, Alice Hargrave, Miranda Lichtenstein, Carmen Lozar, Kim Pace, Frank Pollard, Karen Reimer, Marnie Weber, and Karen Yasinsky.

James Mai

A Place For Everything: Panoramic Photographs of Cosmic Architectures and Sacred Precincts

May 9 – July 19, 2008 Brandt Gallery

Opening reception, Friday, May 9, 5-7pm

Sponsored by Steve and Julie Kubsch and the Bloomington Cultural District

A Place for Everything

Panoramic Photographs of Cosmic Architecture and Sacred Precincts

by James Mai

The exhibition, A Place For Everything, opens with a reception for the artist James Mai on Friday, May 9, from 5pm to 7pm, at McLean County Arts Center. A Place For Everything will be on view in the MCAC’s Brandt Gallery through July 19, 2008.

A Place For Everything is generously sponsored by Specs Around Town Optical Boutique/Steve and Julie Kubsch and Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.

A Place For Everything includes approximately twenty-five panoramic photographs of sacred architectural sites from various cultures, time periods, and locations, including Hindu temple, Islamic mosque and Buddhist stuppa sites in India, Maya temple sites in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, ancestral Puebloan sites in New Mexico and Arizona, and Native American rock art sites and monuments in Texas and Wyoming.

Artist James Mai creates the panoramas by digitally combining four to ten photographs of a specific site to achieve a 90-degree, even 360-degree view. The emphasis of the photographs is to show the manner in which such architectural sites embody a ‘cultural cosmology.’ This includes a culture’s beliefs about how cosmic and terrestrial spaces are related; how cycles of time are determined by celestial motions of sun, moon, and stars; and by specific images and stories of mythology. In various ways these cultural cosmologies are ‘encoded’ in the architectures, and often these sacred architectural precincts are meant to be smaller models (microcosms) of the larger cosmos (macrocosm).

James Mai is Associate Professor at I.S.U. School of Art. He began photographing these sites in 2002. Prof. Mai explains the project’s development, “I began taking the panoramic photographs as documentary source material for my academic research on cross-cultural mythologies, iconographies, and cosmologies. I had not intended to show the photographs until the panoramas themselves began to reveal visually the phenomenological structures of the sites. As I deepened my study of ‘cosmological architecture,’ I realized that the photographs might be the most effective way of examining the experiences of the sites themselves. For the time being, I will allow the photographs to stand by themselves as ‘visual essays’ on these sites.” Prof. Mai’s project was further focused in 2004 when he received a grant to attend a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in Mexico and the Southwest and study the architectures and the iconographies of Mesoamerican and Southwest Native American cultures.

James Mai will speak about his project on Tuesday, May 27, 7pm. This ArtTalk is free and open to the public.

Artist Statement, James Mai, 2008

Sacred architectures throughout the world are designed to elicit an awareness of a cosmology, both natural and cultural, both physical and metaphysical. Such architectures often acknowledge the cardinal directions, the pathways of the sun, moon, and stars, the annual calendar, landmarks in the local landscape, even directions to historic or mythic places or events of the past. Some buildings and precincts remake the larger cosmos in miniature, and often are populated with images of divine beings or ancestors from another realm. Such architectures and their locales are designed to act upon and to reshape our consciousness, coordinating us with the largest orders and powers upon which we depend.

The panoramic photographs in this exhibition are the result of my engagement with and analysis of some of these sites. I try to look at and to move through the environments with an awareness of the designed pathways and vistas, the scales of the architectural masses and spaces relative to my body, the orientation to local topography and to the quadrant-directions, and most especially the axial lines of symmetry and the nodal points of view from which microcosmic-macrocosmic relationships are revealed.

Sacred sites in a new light

(Article re-printed courtesy of the Pantagraph)

by Steve Arney

BLOOMINGTON - In James Mai's panoramic shot of the Taj Mahal, the Indian landmark is shown from the rear.

He was atypically close to a wall when he photographed, making the building seem taller than in most shots and de-emphasizing the dome of the great mausoleum in Agra.

Photographs typically depict the Taj Mahal from the front, at a distance.

Mai is giving a lesson in his selection of photos. He wants to demonstrate that the architects intended a visual experience that changes with the changing light and a person's position.

The Taj Mahal, he said, "encourages you to move through it and stop at certain points and look again at the architecture in order to reveal a new face, a new characteristic." It is, he says, as if the building itself has life.

Mai, pronounced "my," examines sacred buildings of multiple religions in an ongoing exhibit titled "A Place For Everything:–;Panoramic Photographs of Cosmic Architectures and Sacred Precincts." The show runs through July 19 at McLean County Arts Center.

An art professor at Illinois State University, Mai teaches in his exhibit that sacred architecture presents microcosms - miniaturized visions of the world, underworlds, upperworlds and afterworlds. They are positioned with regard to landscape and in a context.

The reason for the location of Stonehenge in England's countryside remains a mystery, but Mai said that obviously that exact site meant something, because the stones for it were hauled for miles. Its alignment of stones matches the changes of the sun's position.

Some sacred sites are positioned for cardinal directions, east, west, north, south, some are sited for lunar and solar alignments and some use a combination.

Ancient sacred sites relate to God and deities but also astronomy, agriculture, water supply - all of life, Mai says. They are both observatory and church and they act as guidebook: places where in ancient days and today families can study carvings to learn about God, faith, values and life.

Their elaborate expanses change mood and mind as they summon worshippers into journeys and spiritual experience and shape their worldviews, he said.

McLean County Arts Center executive director Doug Johnson values the exhibit in helping the public derive a deeper meaning from famous sites.

"In presenting the 'big picture,' we are able to contextualize these iconic settings as part of the world and not separate from it. That is an amazing feat."

The meaning of artwork may be harder to grasp in a Moslem mosque, because as Mai notes, Moslem teaching prohibits figurative representations. The emphasis in mosques is geometric patterns.

"These are not just decorations," he said at a recent talk at the arts center. "These are manifestations of the sacred as it exists in the world, at all levels - from the smallest small to the largest large."

He teaches that Islamic mathematics is both logical and mystical. A Jain temple in India provides Mai's most literal, pure example of the temple as a microcosm. The interior courtyard is what amounts to a massive sculpture explaining the faith, and Jain writings are attached to the walls of the courtyard.

With perhaps similar intent, Teotihuacan builders north of modern-day Mexico City created a microcosm. The shape of the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun mimic the landscape behind them and the two are joined by the Street of the Dead. The alignment put the pyramids and street in a straight line from the setting sun on Aug. 13. That was the day of creation celebrated in Teotihuacan.

The edges of most of Mai's photos are jagged, showing that several frames have been merged. His objective is to convey the experience of visiting.

His arch-shaped image of England's Salisbury Cathedral shows ground level to the ceiling, then along the ribbed ceiling and then back to the ground - as if the viewers are there craning their necks to view the lofty structure. The panorama of Jami Masjid, a Mosque in India, is a 360-degree view, as the observer turns in a circle to take in a vast courtyard.

Mai started his project in 2002 with a standard camera and slide film but then switched to high-end but basic point-and-shoot digital cameras. He never used a tripod and never sought to become a master of camera equipment.

He studies a sacred site before going to it and then examines the spot once there. When he decides on a viewpoint, he takes a series of photographs from a stationary spot. The image frames are merged on a computer.

Mai He expresses no preference toward any site or religion. He said he sees value in all the religions, and he looks for the commonalities of their sacred landmarks.

Steve Arney can be reached at sarney@pantagraph.com.




The free mailing list sign-up is "double opt-in" process. If you chose to enroll, you will receive a confirming e-mail in the next few minutes. Your subscription will only be activated if you reply to that message. Please check your mail, including bulk folders, and reply to our message to activate. Adding this sender to your safe list will allow you to receive messages more easily. We generally send out two e-mails a month to our Events & Exhibits list. Your information will not be rented or sold to any third party.