They Call Me Theirs

“They call me theirs” creates an experience intended to question the distinctions we make between the natural and mediated world. The genesis of this project goes back three years to a trekking trip in Peru. It took me a good three days to “un-plug”, but once I adjusted, an awareness of my surroundings surprised me. There was a presentness that now I can only occasionally attain. I’ve come to question the authenticity of my experience. What was truly mine? What had actually been framed by National Geographic and travel videos?

Authentic observation and participation are core to the project. Upon my return, I started documenting the seasonal changes around the perimeter of my home. I began to search for areas with less human influence, including local nature preserves and subsequently, the heartlands of Illinois and Wisconsin.

The installation reverses the experience of the outdoors by neatly packaging the four seasons in a “box set” that plays on a video monitor inside a handcrafted hardwood box, suggesting that our efforts to purify our experience with nature have actually taken us farther away from it. A “hanging garden” composed of large-scale ink jet prints on aluminum sign panels surrounds the box. The prints were sourced from video stills, then painted, and digitized, creating a luscious though synthetic environment. Two different cacophonous soundtracks play from both Box Set and outside the gallery, highlighting the tension between the realities of the two environments.

The title of the work is taken from a line in the poem “Hamatreya” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which questions man’s desire to claim ownership of the land that is inherently owned by nature. In the poem, the Earth responds, “How am I theirs, / If they cannot hold me, / But I hold them?”

By the Dripping Tree

“By the Dripping Tree” is a multi-media installation including sculpture, video, sound, and inkjet prints mounted on aluminum. The project is an exploration of water and our relationship with the magical and complex substance. Water is the only substance we use for both healing and torture. We are mostly of water as is the earth, and we naively believe we control it until tragedy tells us otherwise. The installation includes large-scale images that are devised from painting and digital manipulation. These structural paintings are created in collage format allowing for site-specific installations.
The aluminum panels represent our romanticized union with water; the videos show her other side. “Swallow”, looped video with sound, explores the sheer power of water and our deployment of water to over power others.

Nature Signs

Nature Signs includes 16 inkjet prints mounted on aluminum and installed on a cast aluminum directional traffic signpost. The piece was created for the City of Louisville Colorado's downtown sculpture garden. The work plays with the words "nature signs" and the format "directional signs", suggesting direction and information. The piece, however, provides neither, and mirrors our own confusion regarding nature, how to protect it, and what trade offs to make.

Now For The Painter

Now for the Painter
4 video loops, 2008/9
Late Autumn Afternoon Drift, 5:00 loop, 2008
At Anchor Near Shore, Spring Morning, 2:27 min loop, 2009
Sunset Sail on the Summer Solstice, 11:25 min loop, 2009
Dawn Outing Early Summer, 4:42 min loop, 2009

The digital seascapes of Now for the Painter are a tribute to Turner’s last seascapes. Ion Warrell, curator for the Tate Modern, described Turner’s later work as
"pared back” paintings… almost pure evocations of light and mood.

The project title is from R.J.W. Turner’s piece Now for the Painter, (Rope) Passengers Going on Board (Pas-de-Calais), 1827. The reference to a painter was Turner’s homage to the Dutch painter Aelbert Cuyp. I have been intrigued both by Turner’s skill with the brush, and by his interest in technology. I couldn’t help but contemplate his likely interest in digital media if he was practicing today. My admiration for Turner’s paintings, a passion for kayaking, and the beauty of a near by lake, were the inspiration for the video seascapes.