STUDIO VIEWS / DEBRIS FIElD (2018/19)
During the course of working on my Studio Views series, I made all sorts of studio playthings. They all relate to climate change, anxiety, distant planets, scale perception, exploration...
I love studio ephemera and the strange clutter that can build up.
I enjoy GIFs because of the weirdly meditative nature of them. Here, I like that they have the repetitive quality of worry. At one point I was thinking of adding video to the show, so these are outtakes from those experiments.
As soon as Fujifilm announced that it was discontinuing the production of its peel-apart instant films I hoarded as much of it as I could. I think I have 3 boxes left in my fridge.
The GIFs Forest, Forest II, Landscape, and Ruins are animations of 35mm still photographs that I shot in Paradise, CA, in the summer of 2019. Paradise of course had been devastated by the Camp Fire in 2018 and I was compelled to see the scene with my own eyes.
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This was based on an outtake from the series. It was shot in my studio. The main ‘mountain’ in the foreground was a rock that my son Avery brought me because he said it looked like a mountain. I added in the white paint splatters. I have a number of things in my studio that have been slowly covered by gesso and paint.
I am interested in the visuals related to weather patterns and the earth’s climate. This GIF is meant to be both anxiety provoking and confusing- it doesn’t illustrate any meaningful information.
This is based on an outtake. The main photograph was shot in my studio. I added the house in the background. I was imagining people hanging on through brutal and strange weather extremes. The light from the house is flickering- everything is supposed to look precarious.
Animation based on an outtake from the series. The main image was shot in my studio- it’s a scan of an instant print.
Animation based on a landscape I shot near Paradise, CA. The idea was to reverse weather conditions. The actual landscape was completely dry, hot and scorched.
