Catching Ancient Sunlight: Inside William T. Carson’s ‘Time Out of Time’

Time Out of Time, a new solo exhibition by artist William T. Carson, opens Saturday, September 12, 2026, at Nüart Gallery at Bergamot Station Arts Center in Santa Monica. The body of work grew out of Carson’s fascination with time: the collision between human time and deep time, measured time and immeasurable time, abstract time and felt time, in all of its many layered forms.

Making Art Out of Eons

Coal has been Carson’s primary medium for over a decade. He is drawn to the material for the way it reflects the brevity of a single life set against geologic timescales—a contemporary memento mori. To hold a piece of coal is to hold ancient sunlight: plants that absorbed light in Montana 60 million years ago, later buried, compressed, and transformed into a flammable black rock. Coal, in this sense, is time made material.

In the series Second Nature and O’Clock, compositions inspired by clock faces emerge from fragments of mica catching light against the deep shadow of coal. The pairing of deep time with daily clock-time calls attention to a paradox: an hour set against 60 million years feels like a grain of sand in an endless desert, yet millions of years only accumulate through the slow passage of time—one single moment at a time.

Elastic Minutes, Rigid Eras

In the center of the gallery sits a clepsydra—an ancient water clock whose name comes from the Greek word for “water thief.” Water drips steadily onto large boulders of coal. As the liquid hits the rock, it triggers a faint, immediate crackle. It is a startling auditory reminder: the fleeting fractions of a second we live in are constantly dropping onto millions of years of compressed history.

For Carson, the exhibition’s title carries a threefold meaning:

• Time Suspended: The expansive sense of presence that emerges when chronological time falls away and an object exists in an open present.
• Time Stretched: The psychological human experience where time bends—memories persist, a single day feels expansive while months pass in a blur, and time seems to speed as we grow older.
• Time Materialized: The literal reality of the art itself, built from materials that are themselves the product of millions of years of geologic process.

From Caretaker to Creator

Carson’s obsession with the earth is deeply personal. He grew up on a rural Montana cattle ranch surrounded by active coal mines. This industrial landscape followed him into his career, later serving as the Program Manager for the Holt/Smithson Foundation from 2019 to 2025.

Handling the creative legacies of Land Art pioneers Nancy Holt (1938–2014) and Robert Smithson (1938–1973)—two artists whose own engagement with geology and the cosmos shaped his trajectory—solidified his path. He stopped merely managing deep-time art and started making it, translating these environments into paintings, sculptures, sound performances, and time-based installations.

Time Out of Time brings different scales of existence into close proximity: geological and astronomical time, mechanical and calendrical time, the fleeting present and the duration of a human life. The exhibition is ultimately an acknowledgment that deep time may never be fully grasped intellectually, but perhaps we might encounter its traces through beauty.

About the Artist

William T. Carson is an artist whose work considers cultural relationships to fossil fuels and raises questions about how we value natural materials. He studied architecture at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad in Copenhagen, and in 2015 graduated with Distinction in Art Studio from Colorado College. From 2019 to 2025, Carson was Program Manager & Assistant Curator at Holt/Smithson Foundation. He was an artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in 2025. Carson is represented by Nüart Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and lives in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with his wife and dog.

Exhibit Details and Opening Reception

There will be an artist reception Saturday, September 12 from 3:00 to 5:00 PM with an artist talk at 3:00 PM. The exhibit runs through October 3 at Nüart Gallery, Bergamot Station Arts Center.

• Location: 2525 Michigan Avenue, Suite B4, Santa Monica, CA 90404
• Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11:00 AM–5:00 PM