Titles with or about Mary Lucier

Ohio to Giverny: Memory of Light

1983, 19 min, color, sound

At the opening of this lyrical, evocative work, Lucier quotes Marcel Proust's Swann's Way: "The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience." This reflection on landscape and memory is an homage to the Impressionist painter Claude Monet, as Lucier translates to video his technique of rendering light palpable. Dedicated to Lucier's uncle and aunt, who met in postwar France, the work's implicit narrative begins in Lucier's childhood home in Ohio and is then transported — metaphorically and literally — to Monet's gardens at Giverny, France. Lucier uses light as a tangible presence to evoke associative memory, washing the screen with luminous tableaux. A unifying soundtrack links the French and American countryside. In a larger sense, the close identification of Monet's and Lucier's landscapes speaks to the powerful role of memory in the artistic imagination.

Assistant: Lisa Rinzler. Audio/Music: Earl Howard. Editor: Ann Woodward. Produced by Mary Lucier in association with the TV Lab at WNET/Thirteen. Executive Producer: Carol Brandenburg.