Four Directions of Memory is an installation, realized through collaboration between my siblings and myself, begun soon after my brother Jim was diagnosed with cancer. We each submitted written reflections about images from my inherited family photographic archive. As I received these writings I reproduced and rolled them into bound scrolls dipped in wax. Recordings of our stories were laid in multi-tracked and layered sonic tapestries, with occasional individual voices coming through clearly. Through this work I construct a kind of map of perspectives surrounding people and events that were either shared directly or indirectly via family stories. In some ways these reconstructions help me to navigate my own history.
Although this project is about my family in particular, they are also intended to resonate on a larger level. They are ways of knowing myself through relationships with others and through my relationship with my art. My search for self-discovery involves listening to the stories that my siblings tell me (and themselves) about what they see and remember. By revealing what they know (or think they know) about our family’s past, I call into question the idea of historical authority or an objective point of view. The intimacy we have with photographs of our shared history is a personal perspective on a universal truth.

My stop-motion “photo-movies” are other examples of the fission and fusion process composed of separate photographic instances. Their subject matter undergoes fracturing as eggs are crushed, waves of water and reflections are examined calling the viewer into both depth and surface observation, and strands of hairs are wound and unwound. In cropping, formatting and reassembling these instances into both still prints that exist and can be viewed simultaneously - as well as video animated sequences whose flow and pacing resembles that of breathing or the beating heart - I question how our perspectives can be both individual and collective. The content of the movies varies but includes the earth, and the act of digging or excavating, the process of aging, matter becoming diffuse, water as a carrier/barrier, smoke as evidence of air and fire, and oral language – a journey of the psyche through the material realms. These stills are shot while video projected through sheets of transparent film, blown by a fan. They represent a concern with penetration from one realm into another – below or beneath the conscious.

My stop-motion “photo-movies” are other examples of the fission and fusion process composed of separate photographic instances. Their subject matter undergoes fracturing as eggs are crushed, waves of water and reflections are examined calling the viewer into both depth and surface observation, and strands of hairs are wound and unwound. In cropping, formatting and reassembling these instances into both still prints that exist and can be viewed simultaneously - as well as video animated sequences whose flow and pacing resembles that of breathing or the beating heart - I question how our perspectives can be both individual and collective. The content of the movies varies but includes the earth, and the act of digging or excavating, the process of aging, matter becoming diffuse, water as a carrier/barrier, smoke as evidence of air and fire, and oral language – a journey of the psyche through the material realms. These stills are shot while video projected through sheets of transparent film, blown by a fan. They represent a concern with penetration from one realm into another – below or beneath the conscious.

My stop-motion “photo-movies” are other examples of the fission and fusion process composed of separate photographic instances. Their subject matter undergoes fracturing as eggs are crushed, waves of water and reflections are examined calling the viewer into both depth and surface observation, and strands of hairs are wound and unwound. In cropping, formatting and reassembling these instances into both still prints that exist and can be viewed simultaneously - as well as video animated sequences whose flow and pacing resembles that of breathing or the beating heart - I question how our perspectives can be both individual and collective. The content of the movies varies but includes the earth, and the act of digging or excavating, the process of aging, matter becoming diffuse, water as a carrier/barrier, smoke as evidence of air and fire, and oral language – a journey of the psyche through the material realms. These stills are shot while video projected through sheets of transparent film, blown by a fan. They represent a concern with penetration from one realm into another – below or beneath the conscious.

Stills from my stop-motion “photo-movies”. Their subject matter undergoes fracturing as eggs are crushed, waves of water and reflections are examined calling the viewer into both depth and surface observation, and strands of hairs are wound and unwound. In cropping, formatting and reassembling these instances into both still prints that exist and can be viewed simultaneously - as well as video animated sequences whose flow and pacing resembles that of breathing or the beating heart - I question how our perspectives can be both individual and collective. The content of the movies varies but includes the earth, and the act of digging or excavating, the process of aging, matter becoming diffuse, water as a carrier/barrier, smoke as evidence of air and fire, and oral language – a journey of the psyche through the material realms.

Stills from my stop-motion “photo-movies”. Their subject matter undergoes fracturing as eggs are crushed, waves of water and reflections are examined calling the viewer into both depth and surface observation, and strands of hairs are wound and unwound. In cropping, formatting and reassembling these instances into both still prints that exist and can be viewed simultaneously - as well as video animated sequences whose flow and pacing resembles that of breathing or the beating heart - I question how our perspectives can be both individual and collective. The content of the movies varies but includes the earth, and the act of digging or excavating, the process of aging, matter becoming diffuse, water as a carrier/barrier, smoke as evidence of air and fire, and oral language – a journey of the psyche through the material realms.

Stills from my stop-motion “photo-movies”. Their subject matter undergoes fracturing as eggs are crushed, waves of water and reflections are examined calling the viewer into both depth and surface observation, and strands of hairs are wound and unwound. In cropping, formatting and reassembling these instances into both still prints that exist and can be viewed simultaneously - as well as video animated sequences whose flow and pacing resembles that of breathing or the beating heart - I question how our perspectives can be both individual and collective. The content of the movies varies but includes the earth, and the act of digging or excavating, the process of aging, matter becoming diffuse, water as a carrier/barrier, smoke as evidence of air and fire, and oral language – a journey of the psyche through the material realms.

Stills from my stop-motion “photo-movies”. Their subject matter undergoes fracturing as eggs are crushed, waves of water and reflections are examined calling the viewer into both depth and surface observation, and strands of hairs are wound and unwound. In cropping, formatting and reassembling these instances into both still prints that exist and can be viewed simultaneously - as well as video animated sequences whose flow and pacing resembles that of breathing or the beating heart - I question how our perspectives can be both individual and collective. The content of the movies varies but includes the earth, and the act of digging or excavating, the process of aging, matter becoming diffuse, water as a carrier/barrier, smoke as evidence of air and fire, and oral language – a journey of the psyche through the material realms. They represent a concern with penetration from one realm into another – below or beneath the conscious. In this way I’m attempting to keep both levels of awareness activated.

“Art Through The Ages” is an installation that incorporates the official canon of all that we artists aspire to or repel ourselves from is presented via the reconfigured remains of the 13 pound, 1,500 page tome, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. Representing History, Literacy, Cultural, Power and Categorization – it embodies the separation of sacred from profane, official from folkloric. In a very real sense, it is as holy as a bible or q’uran for the secular humanist. I had taught Advanced Placement Art History for years from this (12th) and earlier editions and decided to submit this authoritative text to a series of transformative practices over time. The result is a heap of shredded pages from the main body of the book, formed into a sort of burial mound, occasional phrases from which can still be read. Overhead, suspended from a rusty nail, are golden strands that hold glossary entries, rolled into scrolls and dipped in wax. They are the preserved ‘keys’ to the dense prose that seeks to elucidate, even as it obfuscates due to the astounding amounts of presumed prior knowledge and agreed upon perspective. For me, it is amusing and deadly serious. Pieced together and taken apart, I can still admire the beauty of the thing, and bare open the end papers and golden ribbon for reverence.