Kalkota Design

Day 99 - The Tissue Paper. Today was a world of ice canyons and deep voids. It’s funny how something so fragile can conjure deep majesty and awe, just with a bit of crumpling and light.

Day 98 - The Quartz Crystal. When I see this lit up, it feels like the light is somehow coming from within the crystal. It doesn’t seem like there are many places for the light to catch, but clearly there are. It feels very ethereal and unearthly.

Day 96 - The Jig. I love this shade of purple, but again it was interesting how when I shone a brighter light through the jig, the purple was really washed out. All I saw were little pinpricks of light coming through.

I also love how the dimensionality of the holes creates a depth and play of light and shade.

Day 93 - The Cat Toys. I love the beautiful colors that weave into the shadows here, and the way the simple cutouts made beautiful shapes and textures. Who knew cat toys could look so fancy?!

Day 86 - The Dish Brush. Today reminded me of jellyfish and spiky flowers that I don’t know the name of! And I loved the way one of the lights made it look this beautiful mix of yellow and white, even though I always just thought it was white/translucent.

Another thing I noticed again today, is how an object can completely absorb the amount of light shining on it. There’s none left to pass through. My intuition says that often this might be the “perfect” amount of light for an object, where the color is most resonant. Though it’s often impractical to light just one object, but it’s something I’d love to discover more about.

Day 85 - The Beyond Burger Tray. There’s something about this tray that I really like, perhaps the circles symmetrically set into the rectangle and the ridges that define them. When I shone light down the side, I was so surprised because it made me think of sunlight streaming down, and water, and the joyous way light ripples on the surface of water - and yet it’s plastic!

Day 84 - The Cellophane Bag. It’s hard to believe this bag looked clear when I received a Mother’s Day gift inside it! In between Sunday and me taking these pics, it got crumpled more than a few times and then even in the daylight it already looks pink and yellow. My favorite colors were the blue and green, with the blue coming up on the surface at only certain sharp angles of light, and the green being a reflection. The only colors that passed through were pink and yellow. It’s fascinating stuff!

Day 83 - The Packaging Fragment. First it was a dancing spider, then an embattled cockroach 😂 I’m not sure what this fragment came from, but it made for some entertaining shadow play today!

Day 82 - The Plastic Straws. I didn’t think we were supposed to be able to buy these anymore, but my son’s spring carnival had quite the supply!

So here we are with some white and red light … it’s always fascinating to see how some colors won’t shine through others - so the red light was completely absorbed in the green straws! It was fun playing around with the way they worked together, though I really love the shade of green that comes through by itself - one of my favorites!

Day 81 - The Quilling Tool. I love these swirls and their color, which sometimes seems blue and sometimes aqua, depending on the light. It was so interesting the way the shadow through the tool took on such a different geometry with different shaped beams.

Even though it was blue, I felt like it was a sunburst… and then one of the shadows felt like a caterpillar - poles apart! 😂

Day 80 - The Box Grater. Well this one was a lot of fun and not what I expected at all. I was reminded of traffic moving past quickly at night, especially in the rain where you see light orbs everywhere. I also love the juxtapositions: two adjacent sides or seeing through from one side to another. It created such interesting and beautiful shapes and colors. What a treat!

Day 79 - The Pinecone. I’ve seen shadows of pine cones before, but they didn’t look like this. It felt like it was dancing in the light, swaying gently from side to side.

Day 78 - The Dandelion. It’s that time of year when these ethereal little puffs abound. It has such an intricate structure and you can see some of that more fully when it’s closely backlit. It also creates beautiful webs of shadows. Now make a wish!

Day 77 - The Plastic Tray. I love how different this looks in different lights and from different angles, and with a different intensity. In some lights, the hexagons are really pronounced, while in others, it’s a glittering sparkle of sunlight ✨🌞☀️

Day 76 - The Seed Pod. I love the delicate lines on this one - it’s like a whole world in itself. And I love how the light coming through defines the lines so much more clearly. I’m in awe.

Day 75 - The Die. I love the brilliant wash of color that comes out of this, and the streak of yellow that creeps in - it makes me think of a flame 🔥

One really interesting thing, continuing along the lines of which details come through with the light, is how the dots on each face render in the shadow. Mostly, you couldn’t see them there, but when I created a pinhole for the light, you could just see some black dots sneaking in!

Day 74 - The Glass Pane. Today is a bit different, being one of my few daylight days, but also it’s an in situ material. When I arrived to do some grocery shopping this morning, I saw these beautiful rainbows all over the floor. The sun comes in up high at that time of day, and then as it leaves the side of each pane of glass, these rainbows are produced.

Day 72 - The Snapple Apple Bottle. I was interested in this bottle because it’s clear, but it has a subtle blue tint to it. And you can see that the shadows have a definite blue tinge to them - a kind of smoky midnight blue. Also, I love the way some of these plastic bottles have an intricate moulded pattern at the base. This one looks like a beautiful geometric star. From the other end, it looks like the sun. A very cosmic plastic bottle!

Day 71 - The Peri Peri Bottle. I like my hot sauce and I especially like this hot sauce bottle! It has beautiful elegant curves and a couple of interesting “knots” where the light collects just so. I love the way the light makes it look as if the bottle is glowing all of its own accord, from the inside.

And what keeps coming through over and over in this project is how the imperfections are what make the material interesting; it’s where the light catches and sparkles. We’re often so focused on perfection, but really it’s not that exciting!

Day 70 - The Plastic Water Bottle. These bottles are so plain and ubiquitous, but crush them, add a little light and some water droplets and it’s like magic streaming down from heaven. I love the way the light scatters and creates the most beautiful glow and sparkle!

Day 69 - The Steel Wire Sculpture. Today it’s spider webs!

I love the way the light collapses several dimensions into a more complex shadow, or alternatively obliterates the shadow where the light is strongest. I still find that kind of amazing, even though I know intellectually it can happen.

Day 68 - The Fluorite Crystal. This is one of the most fascinating crystals I own, and I’ve seen it take on different colors before, but in different types of electric light it really becomes even more beautiful. I love how one light makes it look blue and another completely aqua. And the beautiful magenta shade is something else, especially side by side with the other colors. It feels so glamorous!

Day 67 - The Knitted Wire Cylinder. Today I really love the range and color of shadows, from a really fine filigree sepia tone to dramatic dark grey. I knitted this on a circle loom, and it’s a simple repetitive stitch, but the light brings it to life in a way I hadn’t seen before.

Day 66 - The Spirulina in Water. My plan was to drop some spirulina into water, because I noticed it makes really interesting shapes and it’s such a beautiful rich green color.

So for a second some beautiful green light came through, and then as it settled into the glass further and was exposed to more light, the strangest thing happened. So I mix this every day with water and I’ve never seen it turn red like this! I don’t know why but I’m curious!

And then, in my continuing quest to reverse Bed Bath & Beyond’s bankruptcy, I broke yet another of our glasses 😂 and then I got the brilliant green I was looking for, and a porcupine head to boot!

Day 65 - The Stencils. I laser cut these stencils some time ago for an illustration, and I thought I might see something interesting with them with light.

I love how in the more conventional view, there are orbs of color appearing, a lovely shade of green, perhaps almost turquoise, that I don’t see too often.

But what I most loved was the way the purple light broke up and diffused around the holes, making me think of jellyfish wafting through the deep ocean!

Day 64 - The Selenite Bowl. I looked at a selenite wand previously, but I thought this form might look a little different, and it did.

I really love the way the cracks block and deflect the light, creating a series of beautiful light and shadow. These crystals are associated with the moon, and when I shine light on them, it’s perfectly clear why. They are ethereal and cool, a little detached, but beautifully luminous 🌙

Day 63 - The Spinach Soup. Most days I make a raw spinach soup with tomato and celery in the blender and it always leaves a thick residue of green on the glass.

It looks pretty cool backlit, but what’s really curious to me is how little green light or shadow comes through. Especially given how GREEN the soup is!

Day 62 - The Prism. I was given this prism many years ago, and I still love looking at it, both in electric light and daylight. It has extra facets cut in the triangular sides, which gives it an even more beautiful range of colors. It’s interesting how some colors can only be seen from certain angles.

Day 61 - The Orange Plastic Tube. I found this and loved its bright orange color, so I was pretty surprised when I lit it up and the color coming though was more of a red/magenta color, even though the tube itself glows orange.

Something about the form of the colors and shadow had me seeing the eye of the storm, with the deeper colors swirling around the outside.

Day 60 - The Sparkling Water Bottle. Is it wrong to post pictures of a plastic bottle on earth day?! 😂 Sometimes I feel pretty despondent about just how much plastic there is, how hard it is to avoid, and how it throttles our waterways and kills animals and us. Plus the fact that even when it’s put in recycling, most of it doesn’t even seem to make it.

On top of that, I think of it as an unexciting material and tend to think of plastic as one universal thing, when in reality plastic shows up in many forms and types.

But today, I was just excited by the elegant swirling lines in the bottle and the way it makes a criss cross shadow when you get the light in the right spot!