Rain Shower (Sonagi), 2007 

LED/sound installation.  Motion detector triggers sound of a taiko drum. Sounds of bamboo tapping follow, increasing in tempo and synchronized with drops of light hitting the floor

This piece locates itself within a transitional space of the gallery—one comes from the outside to the inside and from one end of the gallery to the other.  As one travels through the space, the sound of “thunder” comes from no particular direction and an array of individual lights slowly hits the ground.  As the sound decays to whispers and raindrops, the droplets of light increase in speed, filling the space with only light and sound, and then fading off.

Noli Me Tangere, 2006

Polyethylene, single-channel video

The piece is a single channel video that is back-projected through a domed form. The image is of a finger pushing through fabric. Noli Me Tangere translates to “Touch Me Not” in Latin, and it is what the resurrected embodiment of Christ tells Mary Magdalene. According to one Gnostic interpretation, Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ lover. Recognizing him, she reaches out to him, but maintains distance with his reply.

Fugue State, 2007 

Hand-cast resin, 2-channel video, single-channel audio

Pillow-shaped resin forms hang at head height and shadows are projected through them.  As the light goes through the resin, it casts the image on the front and back of the pillow forms, and as one walks around the piece, the images appear and disappear.  The audio is the artist’s sister singing fragments from “Lack of Color” by Death Cab for Cutie.

Four Quartets, 2007 

Single-channel video, single-channel audio

09’22 video

Each person spoke about their experience of loss and of losing someone.  Within the conversation, there were moments in which the person was lost in their own recollections, and in those moments, they were physically there, but emotionally and psychologically somewhere else.  The visual manifestation of that leaving punctuates the conversation.  Divided into four parts, the video quartet goes through pain and grief, to guilt and unanswerable regrets, then to sadness, and finally to some arrival.  The Four Quartets by TS Eliot alludes to the natural partition of cycles into four—seasons, time, metamorphosis, and waves.

Rings of Saint Genevieve, 2007

Single-channel video sculpture, water, acrylic

Resonance and time are explored in this piece in which layers of water are poured into a cylindrical form and an image is projected on the surface.  Each layer of water creates a discrete line of air bubbles, as if marking time.  As another layer is poured, another ring of bubbles is created.  Then, over time, the lines of bubbles decay into randomness and then eventually disappear.  This is echoed in the projection image of the rings created by water droplets in which the rings expand and contract and then fade away over time. 

The audio is the artist’s sister singing the lyrics to Son Volt’s “Tear Stained Eye”:

Walking down Main Street

Getting to know the concrete

Looking for a purpose from a neon sign

I would meet you anywhere the western sun meets the air

We’ll hit the road, never looking behind

Can you deny, there’s nothing greater

Nothing more than the traveling hands of time?

Sainte Genevieve can hold back the water

But saints don’t bother with a tear stained eye

Seeing traces of the scars that came before

Hitting the pavement still asking for more

When the hours don’t move along,

Worn-out wood and familiar songs

To hear your voice is not enough

It’s more than a shame

Can you deny, there’s nothing greater

Nothing more than the traveling hands of time?

Sainte Genevieve can hold back the water

But saints don’t bother with a tear stained eye.

Wachet auf Ruft uns die Stimme, 2007 

Single-channel video sculpture, water, acrylic 

Light, image, and water are key elements in this piece, in which the image of oil droplets travel upwards through the water.  Water reveals light, like dust in air and the image is captured above.  At the end of the projection, the oil droplets swirl away and disappear.  The melody, played by the artist, is Bach’s “Wachet…” which translates to “wake up, the voice calls to us,” gently reminding us to prepare for endings which we know will come.

Conjugal, 2006

Cotton batting, wood, single-channel video, single-channel audio

This piece is a single channel video projection on DVD that is projected on layers of polyester quilt batting. The image is of two hands moving and rolling underneath miniature white particles on cloth.

The audio is from the prose poem, “Conjugal,” by Russell Edson

A man is bending his wife. He is bending her around something that she has bent herself around. She is around it, bent as he has bent her.

He is convincing her. It is all so private.

He is bending her around the bedpost. No, he is bending her around the tripod of his camera. It is as if he teaches her to swim. As if he teaches acrobatics. As if he could form her into something wet that he delivers out of one life into another.

And it is such a private thing the thing they do.

He is forming her into the wallpaper. He is smoothing her down into the flowers there. He is finding her nipples there. And he is kissing her pubis there.

He climbs into the wallpaper among the flowers. And his buttocks move in and out of the wall.