PULSATION 

Slow Life Movement 

Observations of energy mechanisms 

2009

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A figure moving through the interior of a house being followed by my camera, bubbling water with a pulse, an underpinning of anxious tension joined with daily rituals, attentive caring for life. These are the vignettes I will capture in video.

I investigate how we revitalize and care for ourselves through different acts of making. For me, these processes are walking, cooking, and making art. These activities enable me to activate and replenish a reservoir of energy. I also wonder how energy passes from one person to another. What are some of the many mysterious processes that happen around the home and make us into the person we are? 

I use my video camera as a way to capture many types of imagery and as a tool for constant experimentation as I investigate energy and acts of making. In one process I put a video of myself making a bed behind a bottle of bubbling water. I abstracted the movement of the video to moving color fields to capture the remnants of the energetic action. 

In another experiment, I played with the idea of making a video something handmade. Titled Watercolor, I projected light and colors through the water to create videos composed of abstract color fields that ripple & undulate from one color and pattern to another. I control and manipulate all of the imagery by hand. Using differing pieces of colored glass, plastic bottles, and water. I love joining this tactile process with the hi-tech and virtual realm of video. 

I ground these abstract, energetic, and process-driven inquiries with footage of daily rituals to center my video conversation, as I voice my concerns about the toll the speed of modern life puts on individuals and communities. I share and bring to my artwork many of the tenants of the slow food movement suggesting how to produce your goods and live your life in harmony with the natural systems around us. Simplification is not the answer but leads to situations like a single strain of GMO crops filling frozen dinners for an ever-fattening public. Instead, we could use more focus on enriching our lives and the tasks we perform daily. 

Making these intimate fleeting moments concrete in video drives me. Having the opportunity to share this material with others screened at a moment larger-than-life proportion than the San Jose Zero I festival offers astounds me.

Pulsation 2009

Modesto Junior College Gallery

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I collect materials around the house, Ziploc bags, cereal bag liners, plastic bottles, and glass jars. I fill these containers with various liquids that bubble, ooze and/or stagnate. Using my video camera and projector, I coax these everyday objects to become something more, heightening their dimension into the realm of fairytale. I began this process by projecting video through a plastic bottle filled with water. Moving the bottle around I enlarged and distorted the image sending fragments of the imagery and shimmers of water rippling around the room. I find myself continually drawn back to this action, repeating this experiment in various formats, using anything from baby food jars to cereal bags, and resulting in small objects and full-scale installations.

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