A fifth dot work — and the most stratified. Where Constellation and The Full Spectrum distribute dots in fields, and Dot Creatures uses dots to build forms, this work arranges dots in horizontal bands or strata, creating a geological or atmospheric layering. The composition is organized from bottom to top in progressive color zones: warm yellow and gold at the very bottom, then red and orange, then blue, then a transition zone of mixed dots, then lavender-pink, then teal-blue at upper center.
This chromatic stratification is the most explicitly atmospheric of all the dot works — it reads as a cross-section through atmosphere, through water, through geological time. The bottom layers are warmest and densest; the upper layers coolest and most dispersed. The dots themselves become smaller and more spread as they rise, as if gravity is pulling the larger marks downward.
At upper center, a small spiral form and two outlined circles interrupt the horizontal strata — these are the geological inclusions, the things embedded in the layers, the fossils. Below them, a pair of small outlined faces — barely visible, their features suggested with a few marks — float in the middle strata zone. Sidney placing faces in the layers of time.
Two larger circular forms float in the upper pale zone — one at left with horizontal lines inside suggesting a planet, one at right more simply outlined — completing the atmospheric reading: these are not geological strata but atmospheric layers, and the circles are celestial objects seen through them.