Mildred Howard (American, born 1945)
Blackbird in a Red Sky (a.k.a. Fall of the Blood House), 2002
Glass, wood, and cabling
Museum of Glass, gift of Paule Anglim

Here are my thoughts about Blackbird in a Red Sky . . .

The house was based on the typical African-American shotgun houses of the American South, but I was also pushing for a more multivalent frames of reference. Red is an evocative color in many cultures. And as such, a fundamental form of shelter evokes domesticity, the sphere of women, and all the relationships that take place within a house. The piece was really sites specific in that it was designed for out doors with the apples in the pool to activate connotations of feminine.

The humanistic referents in Blackbird in a Red Sky — African American history, the Feminine — were important to me. But there were purely visual, purely perceptual aspects of the viewer’s experience that were just as or even more central to my artistic intentions. What I was looking to do was to explore a set of propositions about the physics of light and the reflective and refractive properties of the color red. When red light is projected onto red objects the red in the object itself drops out and becomes white or silver. And the sunlight through the red in the object itself drops out and becomes whit or silver. The sunlight through the red glass apples i n the pool refracted a spectrum of amber, yellow, orange and green onto the floor of the reflecting pool. It will be interesting to see if the light inside is positioned to do the same. This is a more controlled environment and will not have the same impact but will present different ways of looking and the relationship between light and color.

I hope that this helps

Mildred