Journal Entry - AIRIE Lab - 26 December 2016.
Midway in between learned pasts, I found myself a little lost, like a character caught in a strange interlude of time. This place is delicate, toxic, and harsh, with a complex wetland controlled and layered with both human and non-human consequences alike. Unlike the deserts of the wild west, where dry wind solitude exposes misfits and fossilized sea life in front of your face, here in the Everglades, things are submerged, young, itchy, confused, and invisible...
Members of the Colony and Transfigurations
This discovery was a welcome shift in my original ideas and patterns for artworks. Instead of the geologic past and natural history at the center, I was driven toward story time, listening to locals, park rangers, and scientists. This revealed a desperation in myself to possess the environment, its plants, and animals. I began exploring the connections between disappointment and discovery, repetition and landscape, politics and the park's inhabitants.
An unexpected occurrence happened at dusk on Old Ingraham Highway one night. A pair of coral snakes swam in the littoral zone of the marsh. Their movements lured me closer. I went off-trail to get a photograph. Next, I saw the pink underbelly of a gator rise up out of the water - a noiseless precision!
I ran down the old road.
Back in the AIRIE Lab that night, the intention was to intermingle memories, nostalgia, fears, and dreams with selections from maps and literature about the seen and unseen.
With that, I created a set of new drawings (Members of the Colony - Acts 6-12), which were later developed into a series of paintings (Mutatis Mutandis). Each work features a central character, a protagonist, and/or a creature that is integral to its own story. Included are daily field notes and text fragments mapping out a process of learning. All these works complete their own narratives in a way, and aid as further study for something else to come. "
