There are two principal kinds of shadow. Form Shadow and Cast Shadow.
 
Form Shadow defines the Shape of Form. Form Shadow is how light plays across a body. Form emerges from the void by the shapes defined by light. Where the light hits the body and how it falls over the body, how light rises and falls in Quantity, defines the body's Form. Light to Dark over a body are like the letters of these words you are reading. The Meaning of a Form is understood by the Whole of the Dark and of the Light and of the Proportion between.
 
Cast Shadow defines the Position of a Form. Cast Shadow is how shadow plays across other bodies, establishing the Location of the original body. Form is placed into the void by the shapes defined by the casting of shadow. The Location of a Form is understood by Cast Shadow.
 
Whether rendered in pencil over half-tone paper or painted in multi-colored pigment on gessoed canvas, whether standing in a sculpture garden or vaulting six-hundred-thirty feet over the Missouri River, SHADOW plays a most critical role, defining Form and Position. Without shadow, our three-dimensional world would appear virtually flat. It would prove difficult to maneuver around obstacles. Without shadow, differentiating between where we are and where we want to get, life would become a meaningless journey through a fuzzy landscape of indistinct, almost formless, virtually meaningless, mere suggestions of passage.
 
Shadow is the Yin of Light. Light is Yang. Light pushes, pulsates, penetrates, explores, exposes, extracts and exacts. It is the blasting splash of photonic stuff. 
 
Yin is Shadow. It forms, it falls, it follows. Shadow suggests, it gestures, it segues, it implores, it pulls, it passively empowers. It is the hand that receives the fist. Shadow defines.
 
Light without Shadow is blinding. Shadow without Light is blindness. Light and Shadow are opposites and indeed, can exist independent of each other OUTSIDE HUMAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
BUT WE ARE INSIDE THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE! What we perceive is wonderfully, perfectly, beautifully defined by the opposites of Light and of Shadow. Ours is a most marvelous place, a sphere of meaningful existence, created and given form by the opposites of Light and Shadow, of Yang and Yin, of Good and the Other Side of Good. 
 
Now, I'm going to attempt an intuitive leap here. Jump with me.
 
"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad."
 
This passage is as appropriate to The Act of Creation, The Architecture of Art, as it is to LIFE. 
 
So, again, I am lead to the idea of a Living Architecture, a personal search for the Meaning of Making and the Making of Meaning, a study and plunge into the magical space between Light and Shadow, between the cast shadow of what I am now and the form shadow of what I am becoming.

PS: I read every Monday with Marley to Lynn. My wife's input usually proves spot-on and essential. Lynn reminded me that another form of shadow exists. She gave it the name, "Emotional Shadow". Emotional Shadows are most often cast by people in our past. These shadows are Physical Memories, shadows rendered in the pigment of emotion. These are shadows that were formed by and are still formed from, our life's experience. These shadows determine, in large part, how we observe the world around us. What we see through our rose or magenta or green or golden colored glasses, how we truly perceive existence, are the shadows and the sources of light we gather through the painting of life. 
 
So, again, I am lead to the idea of a Living Architecture, a personal search for the Meaning of Making and the Making of Meaning, a study and plunge into the magical space between Light and Shadow where we can exchange and change our many-colored glasses any time we choose. Ah, the Art of Living!