The Air Made Visible

An AMDF / V&AP film about the kinetic sculptor Tim Prentice and a lifetime of trying to leave the room

We’re excited to announce that we’ve finished our fourth film, The Air Made Visible, this one about the kinetic sculptor Tim Prentice. It premiered at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival on September 22, 2024. Throughout the coming year, we’ll be showing this film at film festivals, libraries, local theaters, schools, and other organizations. We’ll update you here on where you can see it. Please reach out if you’d like to organize a special screening for your organization: aphillips.visionandartproject@gmail.com.

Synopsis

Our documentary follows the kinetic sculptor Tim Prentice, who is now in his nineties, as he works in his studio and looks back on his career and the influences that shaped him. These include his fascination with the wind; the artists Alexander Calder and George Rickey; his time at Yale as an architecture student studying with Joseph Albers; his father, who was an aspiring craftsperson and architect of note; and his loss of vision to macular degeneration. In the film, he talks about how, for him, the artistic process involves trying to still the din of voices past and present that surround him when he is in his studio. Over his life he has strived to be “alone” with his work, free from the influences in his head, as he attempts to create an “ideal” work of art, one that, like nature, is at once ordered and chaotic. More recently, having banished some of the external voices, he has come to understand that he, too, is one of the people who must leave the room. No easy task.

For decades, Tim has worked with a small crew of local craftspeople and artists who have helped him realize his production of diverse public and private works. One of his closest collaborators on this crew, David Colbert, eventually became his partner. David shares the spotlight with Tim in several scenes, with their interactions showing both the depth of their collaborative partnership and their often differing but complementary views.

Towards the end of the film, Tim discusses having learned in 1996 that he had macular degeneration. At the time, he was in his mid-60s and had gone to the doctor for an annual eye exam, only to be told that he had an incurable eye condition that would likely leave him legally blind. Although his vision has deteriorated in the years since, it has happened so gradually that he has hardly been aware of it, except for glasses that have become increasingly strong. When he works, he relies as much now on his sense of touch as he does on his sight, tracing the wire assemblages with his fingers, feeling for inconsistencies and the character of soldered joints.

The Air Made Visible intertwines footage shot in recent years at Tim’s home and studio in Litchfield County, Connecticut, with footage of a younger Tim as shot by Zach Newcomb in his 2002 film, Finding Tim Prentice, and in casual footage shot by the photographer Jeffrey Milstein. Pivotal moments in Tim’s career, including his loss of vision to macular degeneration, are brought to life through animation done by Molly Schwartz and Lindsey Meyer-Beug of PHLEA TV. The film also contains historic footage from many of the large, commissioned public works Tim’s studio has done over the decades, juxtaposed with video footage of the natural world.

Screenings of The Air Made Visible

For the next year (until September 2025) we will be screening The Air Made Visible at film festivals, art centers, libraries, local theaters, schools, and other organizations. We’ll post screening updates on this site and on FB and IG. Scheduled screenings currently include:

October 27, 2024 @ 2:00 pm at the Cornwall Library, Cornwall, CT

September 22, 2024 @ 1:30 pm at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival, Newburyport, MA

The AMDF, Executive Producer

The AMDF is the film’s executive producer. Along with this film, they have produced three other films about artists with vision loss due to macular degeneration, all of which are currently available to stream free-of-charge: Seeing with Light (about the perceptual painter Lennart Anderson), A Is for Artist (about the artist and illustrator Robert Andrew Parker), and Serge Hollerbach: A Russian Painter in New York.

In addition to their series about artists, AMDF has produced several other films and videos, including a documentary about living with vision loss due to macular degeneration entitled, Losing Sight, Finding Hope: Living with Macular Degeneration.