SCROLLS

Growing up in the vast flat spaces of the Midwest triggered my obsession for the infinite space of the horizontal horizon. Now confined to the urban space of Washington DC, my world is peculiarly claustrophobic. As an artist, my response is to leave my world of filmmaking to work in a medium that allows my physical self to be in the space I create. In the original exhibition, accompanying soundtracks enhanced horizontal, inked landscape scrolls, together evoking the spaces of the tall grass prairies of America’s Inland Sea, and the conversation between culture, digital media and the industrial landscape. Variations in space, scale and horizon invite the viewer to enter into the narrative at any point, and travel through the work via self-directed investigation of place. Irony and humor are important (both audio and visual). Our aesthetic pleasure is perpetually modulated by doses of discomfort, the visually vile and ignoble. Vast spaces of America’s open land is peppered with steel mills, advertisements, and gambling casinos over which soar the Great Blue Heron or a steel suspension bridge---all of it rich with a heady and erotic banquet of sound and light.