My essay “The Fractured Earth and Sky” is featured  in the recently released book The Atomic Kid: An Aesthetic Formed in the Nuclear Landscape: James Stanford. Smallworks Press Ltd, Las Vegas, October 2024. It was a pleasure to collaborate with the book editors and the artist on this fantastic project.

 “Like many in Las Vegas and its environs, Stanford witnessed nuclear testing as a boy. In this region, one hundred above-ground bombs were released by balloons, usually detonating at 1,000 feet, turning sand to trinitite, the radiation invisible yet enduring. There are, however, visible marks in the region including geological fracturing and erosion present in areas of the underground testing, as well as cuts into fault lines in the Yucca flats. Stanford’s work Atomic Glass confronts the physical effects of this testing on the desert landscape. Radiation from nuclear testing continues to plague people, a legacy of the mid-century weaponization of science as “handmaiden of governmental, military, and corporate expansionist interests.”

While Stanford’s vision is undoubtedly related in part to the act of artistic witness, it also works to interrogate and explore the symbolism and metaphor embedded within these abstracted images of atomic testing. In his images, the artist departs from documentation of the expanses of sequestered testing grounds, reveries on the destruction and encroachment of land and the enduring relentlessness of desert environs, and the erasure of mankind and memory. Instead, Stanford captures the cataclysmic moment of a nuclear explosion as we see in the ominously beautiful image, Global Atomic Explosion where an impossible orange ring of patterns is framed by night black. At the core of this work is image not only as symbol, but also as metaphor. For Stanford’s part, the relationship between the mandala-like images of his series Indra’s Jewels and Shimmering Zen and the atomic imagery in The Atomic Kid is interwoven in part through the process of making and the connection between cosmic or celestial motifs and abstraction. In works such as Nuke Image Round, we see both moments in time and a window into a view of the universe.”

Publisher’s Synopsis: The Atomic Kid offers a unique and personal reflection on the artist’s journey as shaped by the Nevada nuclear landscape and his upbringing near the Nevada Test Site. The book features insightful essays by renowned art historians Jean Wainwright and Rosa JH Berland, as well as contributions from the editors, Jane Boyer and Gemma Marmalade, and Stanford himself. A foreword by Rob McCoy, CEO of the Atomic Museum, further enriches this exploration of art, history, and place. The Atomic Kid is available for purchase in the U.S. at the Atomic Museum, Las Vegas and through the Smallworks Press site and Amazon.

For more information visit: https://www.smallworkspress.com/books/the-atomic-kid-an-aesthetic-formed-in-the-nuclear-landscape