The image of a blue sky, whether it be witnessed live at the present moment, recalled from memory with eyes closed or open in the escape of a daydream, or seen painted or photographed, is often a visceral experience. It is a sight and sensation that is at once universal, belonging to all, and yet also very particular to each of us.

It beckons a number of complements and contrasts. It speaks of a greater expanse and beyond that draws up the fantasy of getting whisked away in flight, and yet also offers a sense of grounding and centering. To look upon the bigness of the blue often allows us to hear the ebb and flow of our breath and pulse—for us to feel as if we can grasp the fact and the phenomenon that we exist and are alive. It can make us feel lost in it and also found—sometimes simultaneously. It can make us feel part of its largess, but also have us feeling very aware of how minuscule we are in its seemingly limitless frame. It reminds of a more conscious mode of being, by inviting us to step into it, sometimes with conscious thought and sometimes without.

It is grand and also simple. Powerful but gentle. Sometimes intimidating, but is often a source of comfort. 

The expanse of the sky has been a muse and subject of many a study, song, poem, ode, and painting for millennia. So much so that the mere color near automatically calls upon the idea of the sky. The two are interlinked across languages, borders, and cultures. 

In Tender Hours, Pam Quinto offers a deeply felt, meditative and emotive preserve, and pressing of not just the image but the emotions and lived sensation and visceral experience it gives. Born from her own close encounters with it in early mornings and the calm of closing of the day are conscientiously crafted distillations of these personal moments of pause, breath, and respite.

Lenticular photographs of clouds are laid out and offer a glimpse into the window of an eye that sees the play of light, shadow, hue, and tone that give clouds this sense of life as they shift and morph alongside passage of time—snapshots of dawn and dusk and moments in between.

The quiet and whisper-like glow of the horizon line painted on a canvas invites quiet meditation. The horizon offers neither clear nor blurred figures for us to puzzle upon and guess the specificities of, but still whisper and imply a more, a beyond. It is easy to get lost in the quietude of this mysterious but calm veil, not unlike looking upon the far reaches of an actual grand landscape just as well, and reliving the sense of the hot or cold of the air and wind breathed in and felt on the skin.

When describing what sort of a blue a blue is, the sky is often what is brought up to give a clearer sense if it is that. And when a sky-like blue finds itself in an object, it might feel like we have a piece of the sky in a trinket. To hold it in our hands can feel magical, as if we hold the sky itself and all the gifts it gives. As in the case of a Blue Lace Agate stone. Known for granting peace and tranquility, feelings looking upon the sky grants just as well. And like the sky, a stone that encapsulates its likeness also beckons a similar kind of marveling at. 

What is far away and grasped at is all of a sudden put in our hands to touch. Carved from ground which is so much closer to us, the mystery of the sky is made tangible. All of a sudden there is a bridge between the earth and sky.

From looking and musing upon the expanse of the blue, Quinto has also ventured to fashion tangible embodiments of the feeling of and thoughts born from the blue and this blue with her own hands, borrowing again from the earth to mold the roundness of being. Spheres and roundness are often linked to the idea of limitless expanse. A globe is spun, and can continue to spin without reaching a halt. The earth is round, and walking towards a horizon line reveals a further horizon line. Spheres imply a limitless sense of forever, and yet, they can also imply containment, condensing, and distillation. Quinto’s ceramic rounds, however, are not uniform spheres, but more free-form oblongs varying in shape—softened rocks implying that being is never fixed, it is becoming. They are also diffusers of scents—specifically, scents that the cycles of the sky make manifest in the earth; an attempt towards the likeness of petrichor, which comes about when rain touches dry soil. Where the clouds and the sky inhale, hold and release, the earth takes it and exhales it. 

Mixed with notes of vetiver, rose, rosemary, and Bulgarian lavender with drops of patchouli, this aroma hopes to capture the essence of dew in the early mornings, which these handmade stones resemble.

Blue and the sky are a curious thing. They are the backdrop to day to day life as it is lived; but also a grand dynamic thing that moves in ways that make it seem like it has a life of its own. They have inspired much study, musing, thought, metaphor, and philosophy that lead us to meditate upon so much with regard to being and existence. And Tender Hours is an earnest and sincere act of distilling the wondering, wanderings, and reveries of the cycles and mysteries of the blue.