Painting Cathedral Rock, Experimental Film / Video Installation
Synopsis
Painting Cathedral Rock is a meditative experimental work in which painting, performance, and film converge to explore landscape, ritual, colonialism, and the fragile boundaries between spectacle, spirituality, and perception. A silhouetted figure washes and paints the iconic view of Cathedral Rock—a sacred Indigenous site and popular "vortex" destination in Sedona—using the surrounding red earth. A ritualistic meditation on erasure, revelation, and the act of looking with heightened care and deepening attention.
Press Release
Mel Day’s "Painting Cathedral Rock": A Site-Specific Meditation
New Award-Winning Experimental Short Film Examines the Unstable Edges of Vision, Cinematic Spectacle, Belief, Invisibility, and Climate Change at Sedona’s Iconic Cathedral Rock
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, June 2026 — Contemporary artist Mel Day’s latest award-winning site-specific work, Painting Cathedral Rock, is a compelling fusion of video, performance, and painting that explores the shifting boundaries of perception, belief, invisibility, and environmental vulnerability.
Filmed at the Gretchen Warren Interfaith Chapel in Sedona, Arizona—centered on the revered vista of Cathedral Rock, a sacred Indigenous site and popular “vortex” destination—Day’s piece unfolds in two evocative acts. In the first, the artist meticulously washes and cleans the chapel altar window, gradually revealing the iconic landscape beyond. The second act sees Day painting the window with a blend of red earth sourced from the surrounding terrain, simultaneously concealing and unveiling the landscape, and dimming the chapel’s interior light. This ritualistic gesture invites viewers to contemplate the duality of sight and the act of looking, while evoking themes of erasure and revelation.
Painting Cathedral Rock was awarded Best Experimental Film at the Sundial Film Festival, Best Experimental Short at SF Shorts, and Best Experimental by the LA Independent Women Film Awards (2026). The film has also received Official Selections in 2026 from Antimatter Media Festival (Canada), International Experimental Film Festival (Athens, Greece), Berlin Indie Film Festival, Defy Film Festival (Nashville), Atlanta Experimental Fest, On Art Poland, Cauldron International Film and Video Festival (Utah), Los Angeles International Film Shorts, New York Indie Shorts Awards and nominations from New York Shorts Awards (2026 semi-finalist), and Toronto’s Art Film Spirit Awards (2026).
Painting Cathedral Rock was produced with the support of Sedona Artist Residency, Sedona Arts Center, and Verde Valley School. The work is directed, performed, and edited by Mel Day. Cinematography and sound editing by James Kelley and video editing assistance by Justin Edwards.
Background
Day initiated Painting Cathedral Rock during her 2016 Summer Artist Residency at Sedona Arts Center’s Verde Valley School. Inspired by “The Cloud of Unknowing,” a radical 14th-century spiritual text advocating connection to the divine through love, rather than knowledge, immersive readings of the text, and through daily meditative walks to the Gretchen Warren Interfaith Chapel, Day grappled with the layered symbolism of the window—its cinematic frame, its overlap with colonialism, and its relationship to landscape painting and climate change. “I found myself visually consternated by the colliding references and shifting, complexly layered realities and contexts,” Day remarks. “I decided to create Painting Cathedral Rock as a quiet meditation and ritualistic exploration of looking—with heightened care and deepening attention.”
Originally conceived as a three-part performance—washing, painting, and cleansing—the work evolved over nearly a decade. Day ultimately distilled the piece into a two-part, single-channel video, reflecting on the complexities of viewing, responsibility, and the coded histories embedded within the act of looking. “The third section, a cleansing, felt wrong—too redemptive, too easy,” Day notes. “Returning to it in 2025, I understood that the unresolved middle was the work: what we are entitled to look at, what we are responsible to in our looking, what is already encoded there.”
Credits
Directed, performed, and edited by Mel Day
Video Editing Assistance: Justin Edwards
Cinematography & Sound: James Kelley
Thanks to the support of: Melissa Wyman, organizer of Sedona AIR Bay Area group and 2016 AIR participants (Michael Namkung, Amanda Curreri, Llewelynn Fletcher, Lukaza Brandman-Verrisimo, Grace Rosario Perkins, José Luis Iñiguez, Cara Levine, Weston Teruya, Melissa Wyman)
Carol Holyoake, Manager, Sedona Arts Center
Eric Holowacz, Executive Director, Sedona Arts Center
Paul Amadio, Head of Verde Valley School
Sedona Arts Center
Image: Mel Day, Painting Cathedral Rock, 2025, video still (TRT: 3:17)
For media inquiries, exhibition information, or viewing requests, please contact:
Mel Day, Mel Day Studio
Wendy Norris, Norris Communications
wendy@norriscommunications.biz; (415) 307-385
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Mel Day, Painting Cathedral Rock, Video Installation with sound (TRT: 3:16), 2025