These sketches in the deep woods of Pickens County are meditations on the temporary. They are rituals for igniting intuition in the energy body.
During the onset of the quarantine, my studio closed and I isolated in a cabin in N. Georgia. I brought only a digital camera and laptop, and no other art supplies.
At the local grocery store, I randomly purchased a collection of cheap and colorful plastic tablecloths. I was attracted to the sterility of plastic and the ease of playing with materials found during an essential supply run.
The thin and lightweight sheets have become expressionistic bursts, armor, sheer silk, primeval beasts, sagging emotions, ancestors, and floating skyways.
There is a misconception that meditation is about bliss. On the contrary, it is very much about presence, and in the present, everything arises – all the strange and real. David Lynch is a good example of a meditative practitioner who uses strangeness to create such complex portraits of nature, humanness, and the underworld. Energy is a medium in and of itself and as my materiality might change I am still playing with these moving forces.
I isolated myself in a cabin in North Georgia during the first two months of the quarantine. The woods became a safe haven to process the awkward and enlightening energies that were coming up as a result of the pandemic and quickly became a residency for the series, Quarantine Sketches.
In the documentation are these authentically poetic moments with stillness or with the uncontrollable. And as a participant, I am observing, interpreting, or interrupting them. The interruption comes in as resistance that might arise in that awareness. I am observing myself as the almost laughable finite part of the whole, but also as life itself celebrating the landscape that is enveloping me.
These videos are sketches of these experiential moments, as are the photographs. They are channels to the sacred or unknown. They are places beyond the gradients but very similar in that they are here to awaken to the present moment whether calming, electrifying or surreal.
These processed based photos portray underlying abstractions at play in the studio. They are a way to inhabit the questions in these developing artworks, clarify their intentions, and energize the materials with the body.
Materials: Body, rubber, gradient paintings, light, color, emotions, photography, video stills, modeling, hiding, body as sculpture
Paradise is a feeling. It is an imagined place, limitless and pleasure-seeking.
In this series, the Puerto Rican island of Culebra poses as paradise in what is considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean.
Some of the video documentation from the journey backdrops the performance, Tropic of Gemini. These images are brief moments of pleasure between the work.
Vibrachromatic prints available in the Gallery.
These are videos of a journalistic-style paradise hunting in Culebra, Puerto Rico.
Aerial camera views and oceanic horizon lines are interrupted by comedic engagements with a passing jogger and an inflight conversation with the pilot, who was also a Gemini.
Vacationing alone positioned the daily activities back towards the camera and thus a tag-a-long audience. The videos were pieced together into a projection backdrop for the performance, Tropic of Gemini.
