Artist Statement:
The photo-based works grow from my background as a sculptor. These are four dimensional in concept and execution, but only two in the presentation. The concept of space and time is reconstructed in the mind of the viewer. Almost thirty years ago, I based myself in rural West Virginia in order to be involved in “Earth-art,” that is, art that uses the Earth itself as the physical medium of expression. My concern was in conservation, which required me to develop a non-intrusive and participatory means of working in and with the landscape. This led to work in a manner that required photo documentation, and then to the camera becoming the “central tool.” The year and day-long works could be thought of as bringing a concentrated gaze; the brief, dynamic shots read as a glance, in the turn of the head, as the eye itself sees, before the mind edits this to a visual memory, often as a “still.” Indeed, all of the images could be thought of as movies presented as stills. The unique cameras required to produce these time based works have been constructed by me and evolved over the years, one capability leading to the next. The first “rig” was put together in 1980. These have been very labor intensive, built with simple hand tools, hard work and patience, the conceptual skills as with the manual ones deriving from a background in sculpture. The work is presented in a poetic mode that asks one to stand briefly outside the usual flow of time, hopefully causing us to reflect on our “time-in-the-world,” individually, culturally, and even as a species.