Where am I? Part 3: The Field

It's been a while since I've posted and I have a lot to catch up on. In the past month, I've been working to find answers to some of the questions that were raised during the residency. In some cases, the answers revealed themselves. In other, they remain elusive.

One thing that I'm continuing to work through is exploring landscape through personal connection. So far this semester the imagery in my work was limited to my grandmother's back yard, but I'm beginning to expand a bit, moving forward in time from early childhood to adolescence and the end of childhood. That brought me to my family's move to rural Georgia when I was in middle school. Although I had a rather introverted childhood, I felt especially isolated during that time. One of the most vivid (and pleasant) memories I have is spending time reading and daydreaming while sitting in the middle of the field at the top of the property. It was an extremely rich, sensory experience. I distinctly remember the smell of the wind, the sound of cicadas, the dust rising up from the occasional car driving down the dirt road and the way the lavender wildflowers swayed in the breeze. The contrasting feelings of near isolation while also being connected with my surroundings remain with me.

Also, with this sand painting I numbered the images using the orthographic projection method I discussed earlier: 1-front, 2-back, 3-left, 4-right, 5-top, 6-alternate. Since I cannot photograph the painting from underneath (yet), I use an alternate view, in this case from the top, as a substitute for the sixth image. The 7th image is a bird's eye view of the entire work, for documentation purposes only, which will only be shared on this blog. I've been thinking a lot about the fact that these works will never been seen by the public except through the images I take of them. I would like to use my role as liaison between art and viewer more to my advantage. The work itself is an exercise in ephemera, its documentation, and sharing a fleeting moment with the viewer through the image. So the viewer, will experience my imaginary landscape much like an actual landscape; from a particular point of view, instead of all at once. It is my hope that will help create a more intimate connection between the viewer and the image and dissolve the separation between the two.