Mental Weather

“The principal fact is that the biosphere has existed throughout all geological periods from the most ancient indications of the Archean.” -Vladimire Vernadsky.

This is a statistically incredible length of time for the conditions capable of supporting life to have remained so fundamentally constant. So what is this elan, gaia or geochemical riddle that now begins to quietly release her grasp? Figure ground, the bones of any picture, more and more my eye goes straight to the background- I’m interested in the air around our moment in the sun.

Mental Weather stems from a year long residency with Taft Botanical Gardens spent researching climate change and the Thomas Fire, yet another California megafire, that swept through the Ojai Valley in 2017. The skyscape drawings are done in graphite pencil on Arches paper. I then slice the paper in a x, starburst or banded patterns. The cuts undo the previous effort at creating an illusion of infinite space and push the paper support toward its material limits. The work can be presented in various formats. The cuts cast shadows across the Romantic skyscape. Or as an installation outside or against a window, surrounding light intersects the image and spills past the edges of its framing. The video piece Edge of Her Nature is a collaboration with mezzo soprano and composer Rebecca Comerford Tyron. It explores the effect of wind, breath and voice, three manifestations of air moving through both landscape and the human body, animating the cut strips of skyscape drawing.