A Tincture of Time: Artist Alexa James Clavette
A Tincture of Time: a psychedelic art film set in a hospital about a mother’s journey to save her ailing son
Last summer I received a Maine Arts Commission grant to begin sketching out some preliminary ideas on this project. Using the grant money I’ve been able to pay some amazing collaborators to get the ball rolling on environment sketches, dance and lighting ideas, costumes sketches and prototypes, and sound composition. In a series of blog posts I want to feature the collaborators I’ve been lucky to work with over the last several months.
Alexa James Clavette is a Southern Maine-based painter and photographer. I was drawn to work with her in this capacity because her own work is deeply mystical. Often using film and filters in her photo work, she has a way of making the mundane mysterious. Her paintings often depict magical, mythical worlds, thick with layers and muted colors. Sometimes there is a lone woman adrift. It has been a pleasure to see her visions on this project.
Alexa James Clavette on Instagram: @lapis.lazarus
The hospital I imagine is filled with surreal and mystical moments. I’m interested in capturing the emotional experience of spending a lot of time in the hospital while you are there with someone you love. For this reason a psychedelic fantasy epic felt most appropriate. Your mind finds ways to cope with the uncertainty of being there and to deal with the daily stresses inherent in the hospital structure itself. You begin to imagine yourself as a hero on a journey - even (and maybe especially) when nothing much is happening. I found the hospital to be an incredible blend of deep, sublime magic and bumbling, soul-crushing bureaucracy.
This concept sketch by Alexa James Clavette depicts a hum-drum hallway in the basement of the hospital as it transforms into a glittering crystal cave.
The crystal cave in the hallway ends with an illuminated door which opens to this arboretum. In the arboretum most of the trees grow upside down. Throughout the film, there is a theme of nature subverted. Medical practitioners are both deeply connected to and detached from nature throughout the film. There is a sense of a deeper natural power that runs through the hospital, though it mostly appears in a thwarted or subverted form: trees growing upside down for instance. There is no natural light anywhere but there are many instances of lushness. Jungle vines growing under florescent lights and exotic animals behind lab doors. In the film, nature ultimately breaks loose in the form of impish and terrifying sprites.
This concept sketch was also created by Alexa James Clavette with the prompt that I imagined it to be a kind of Willy Wonka garden…
Funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts
