Brian Kirk Nelms

The Houston-based artist Brian Kirk Nelms was in residence at Chinati in January-February 2006. Nelms is a photographer with a special interest in the nighttime sky. To make his pictures he uses computerized tracking instruments, an equatorial tripod mount, telescopes, and film that allows for long exposures to be taken by correcting for the earth’s rotation. The result of a long process of looking and waiting, Nelms’s photographs of the sky at night are calm and contemplative, melding astronomy into abstraction.

Brian Kirk Nelms received his MFA in Photography from the Cranbook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 2004. In summer 2004 he was an artist in residence at Cooper Union in New York, where he participated in a group show organized by the school. He has also exhibited work as part of group shows at the Cranbook Art Museum, the Richard M. Ross Art Museum at Ohio Weslyan University, and the University of Texas at Austin.