 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
About the Work
My installations use a variety of different methodolgies to immerse the viewer and invite interaction. Please read my artist statement for a more indepth understanding of my work. |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Sailing to Byzantium
A 12' long rowboat with a gold interior and three seats became an environment for the participants to experience a sound and video interpretation of Yeats "Sailing to Byzantium". Earphones were placed on the seats to invite the participants into the boat to listen to the sound as they watched the video. |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Coniunctio
A 12' x 12' chessboard was laid on the floor with grass and bark and surrounded by loseley drapped white lace. Viewers became participants by removing their shoes and entering into the space, where they discovered two live doves in a cage. As their feet brushed across the rough bark and smooth grass, two sensual experiences were united within their body. The doves, symbol of peace and love, awake compassion within the caged chests of the participants. |
| |
|
|
 |
|
The King's Library
Red hard-bound books with gold lettering stood upright on a shelf where a sign invited viewer's to browse through the books. Each book had a red ribbon marking a specific page in which a passage about a king. The participant could sit on the chair, read the book, change the book mark, and contemplate their relationship to the discovered text. |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Fluidity
The viewer was met with a microscope that had three slides, blood, semen and saliva. If the slides were placed under the microscope, the image was projected on a large wall mounted television screen, revealing that the fluids were still active and alive. As the micro was made macro, the viewer effectively became the painter, creating images from my bodily fluids. |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Mortificatio
This piece was created as an all night ritual. I started by engaging the space with my body and feel how it resonated within the space of my body. By integrating physical materials with the immateriality of video, I invite viewers to contemplate the immateriality of the physical body and feel the tangability of their soul. A still bell hung above the mandala while the ringing of the same bell was heard elsewhere. Although the space was filled with many objects, there was a felt starkeness to the experience and few people were willing to stay in the room for very long. |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Communion
Three vases, filled with three different liquids, placed on a table. Participants were invited to "serve someone a drink". The drinks of milk, wine and mineral water were respectively labeled body, heart and mind. The social interaction gave rise to interesting conversation about the nature of giving, receiving and sharing drinks that effect our physical, emotional and mental well being. |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
The Joker's Mirror
Using a one way mirror and an infra-red sensor, I created an experience that surprised the viewer. As the approached the framed mirror, the sensor triggered a light to slowly brighten, revealing the skull wth the jester cap behind the mirror. This was a moment of looking beyond surfaces, into the depth. The face of the viewer and the skull lined up perfectly, so that the surface/depth experience behind the mirror was simulating the physical reality of the viewer. This triggerred another polarity int he viewer, that of life and death. Death, the ultimate joker, embedded in the reality of life itself, is reflected in our living eyes. |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Treasure
I custom ordered gold cholocate coins printed with crowns and roses to fill an antique chest. The participant was invited to "taste that which lies hidden" by opening the chest. The dark wood hiding the gold inside, that only shown when the darkness was broken by their own actions. Then the chocolate revealed by peeling off the false gold. |
| |
|
 |
|
"Words Become Offal, Compost of Us All"
This piece had to do with the inability of language to actually touch the deepest part of ourselves. As much as I love language, I often feel that it kills something more primal. By pinning worms to form the letters, I hoped for the viewer to viscerally grasp the destructive power of language. Most viewers were too unnerved by the worms dying on the wall. However, none of them actually took action to remove them from the wall and place them back in the buckets of earth below.
|
| |
|
 |
|
Shamanic Extraction
I have a love/hate relationship with computer technology. I am always struggling to use technology in my art, yet often feel that is damages my more visceral responses as a performer. I have also developed tendonitis from too much work in the web industry. To heal myself, I performed a ritual where I imagined withdrawing the invasive computer parts from my body. By leaving my gloves on the tray, I invite the viewer to stand in my shoes and enter into the ritual with me.
|
| |
|
 |
|
The Guarded Secret
I think of a book as a miniature installation. It's a private space in which the viewer has to participate to experience. This book is like a journey through a wound to it's eventual healing. Often, however, we are too frightened to even enter our wounds, hence the scorpion. In order to open the book, the viewer must lift the scorpion off of the cover. |
| |
|
|
 |
|
The Tender Scar
This actually began as a painting and later became an installation. In the first phase of the work, the painting became a wound that I cut open. Working intuitively, I ended up casting parts of my body and then using them to pull out of the wound. The object sat around like that for a long time until eventually it had bled out. I then healed the wound by restretching a new canvas underneath and sealing the old canvas to the first, like a old layer of skin on new skin. It was now a painting that looked like a scar. But scars still contain memory, and so I projected an image of the open wound onto the scar. This leaves the viewer experiencing both the past and present as they stand between the painting and the projector - the light of the past illuminating the present. |
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
ART
